Dead vs. Stuck Pixels, and What Can Actually Be Fixed
They look similar on a white screen but they're different faults — and only one of them sometimes recovers.
Both show up as a single wrong-looking dot on an otherwise clean screen, and both get called "dead pixels" by most people — but they're caused by different failures, and only one of them is ever recoverable.
Dead pixel
A dead pixel receives no power at all. It stays black on every colour — run the dead pixel test through white, red, green and blue, and a dead pixel won't change no matter what's behind it. This is a hardware failure in the transistor driving that pixel. It is permanent. No amount of massaging, tapping, or software will bring it back — anyone selling you a "dead pixel fix" tool for this specific fault is selling you nothing.
Stuck pixel
A stuck pixel is still receiving power, but one or more of its sub-pixels (red, green, blue) is locked on or off incorrectly. It shows up as a coloured dot — often red, green, or blue — against fields where it shouldn't be there. Run the stuck pixel test to cycle through colours and confirm: if the dot changes colour or disappears on some fields but not others, it's stuck, not dead.
Stuck pixels sometimes recover on their own, and sometimes respond to the classic "cycle through colours rapidly for a while" approach — the stuck pixel test's auto-advance mode does exactly this. It's not guaranteed, but it costs nothing to try before assuming the panel needs replacing. A very light, gentle press on the pixel's location (screen off) has also anecdotally helped some people, though this carries a small risk of making things worse and isn't something to do on an OLED panel.
The practical difference
If you're deciding whether to return a new monitor, both are usually covered under a manufacturer's dead-pixel policy — see our guide to those policies. If it's an older display you're trying to live with, a stuck pixel is worth ten minutes of trying to recover; a dead pixel is not going anywhere and your only options are living with it or replacing the panel.