Touch Screen Test
Free touch screen test for phones, tablets, and laptops. Draw with multiple fingers, tap a grid to find dead zones, watch for ghost touches, and see pressure.
Start the test to cover the screen with a drawing area. Each finger gets its own colour trail, the bar shows how many touches are active, and you can switch to a grid mode to find dead zones or a watch mode to catch ghost touches. The Exit button stays in the top bar the whole time.
This device does not report touch support to the browser. You can still open the test and draw with the mouse, but the touch counts will stay at zero.
Tip: remove any screen protector that overlaps the edges, clean the glass, and test with dry fingers. Rotate the device and run the grid again to cover both orientations.
How to use the touch screen test
Draw mode gives each finger a different colour and draws a continuous line as it moves. Drag slowly across the whole screen, especially along the edges and corners, and watch for the line breaking or jumping: a gap means the panel stopped tracking, and a jagged line on a straight stroke means noisy or poorly calibrated tracking. Put down two, three, five, and then all ten fingers and compare the live count in the corner with the maximum the browser reports for your device.
Grid mode divides the screen into cells that turn green when touched. Swipe over every cell; any that refuse to turn green mark a dead zone. Dead strips along an edge after a drop or a screen replacement are the classic pattern. The counter shows how many cells remain.
Ghost watch counts down ten seconds during which you should not touch the screen at all. Place the device flat on a table first. Any touch recorded during the countdown is a ghost touch and is drawn in red with its coordinates, so you can see whether it clusters in one region (usually a damaged spot on the digitizer) or appears randomly (more often an electrical cause such as a charger, moisture, or a failing controller). Run it once on battery and once while charging; ghost touches that only appear while plugged in point at the charger or cable.
Understanding the numbers
The browser reports the maximum number of touches the hardware supports as navigator.maxTouchPoints. Modern phones and tablets support ten; some budget devices and older laptops support two or five. The live count is touches.length from the touch event, which is how many contacts the digitizer is tracking at that instant. Pressure comes from each touch's force value between 0 and 1; most screens do not measure it and report a fixed value, so a constant reading is normal rather than a fault. Stylus-enabled tablets report real pressure, which is useful for checking a pen whose lines come out uneven.
Fixing touch problems
- Unresponsive areas: clean the screen, remove protectors and cases, and restart the device. If the dead zone persists in every app, the digitizer is damaged. On phones it is bonded to the display, so the whole assembly is replaced.
- Ghost touches while charging: switch to the original charger and cable, or a certified one. Cheap chargers leak enough electrical noise into the panel to trigger phantom presses.
- Ghost touches after water exposure: power off and leave the device to dry for a day or two; moisture between the glass and the digitizer causes false contacts until it evaporates.
- Erratic tracking with a protector fitted: thick tempered-glass protectors, or ones with air bubbles, reduce sensitivity. Some phones have a "touch sensitivity" or "glove mode" setting that compensates.
- Everything fails intermittently: on repaired devices this is often a display cable that is not fully seated. A repair shop can reseat it in minutes.
Frequently asked questions
What is a ghost touch?
A ghost touch is an input the screen reports when nothing is touching it. It shows up as apps opening by themselves, text being typed, or the screen scrolling on its own. Causes include a cracked digitizer, moisture under the glass, a poorly fitted screen protector, a damaged or non-certified charger injecting noise while charging, and in some cases a loose display cable. The ghost watch mode above records any touch during a hands-off period so you can prove it is happening.
Why does the test report fewer simultaneous touches than my phone supports?
navigator.maxTouchPoints is what the browser reports the hardware supports, usually 5 or 10 on phones and tablets. The live count is how many fingers the panel is actually tracking right now. If you put ten fingers down and the count stops at five, either the browser caps it or the digitizer does; try another browser before blaming the hardware.
Pressure shows 0 or 1 all the time. Is that a fault?
No. Most touch screens are not pressure sensitive. Browsers report force as 0 (or a fixed 1 while touching) unless the device has a pressure-sensing layer, which is now rare on phones. Stylus input on tablets that support it reports real pressure through the same value.
Some grid cells will not turn green no matter what.
That is a dead zone: an area where the digitizer no longer registers contact. It is often a strip along one edge or a band across the middle after a drop. Before concluding that, remove any screen protector or case that overlaps the edge, clean the glass, and try with a dry finger. If the same cells fail in another app, the digitizer is damaged and the screen assembly needs replacing.
Does this work on a Windows touch laptop or a Mac trackpad?
It works on Windows and Chromebook touch screens and on Android and iOS devices. Mac trackpads do not send touch events to web pages, so on a Mac you will only be able to draw with the mouse pointer. For pointing devices use the mouse tester instead.
Is my touch data recorded?
No. The page runs entirely in your browser, has no analytics, and sends nothing to a server. Closing the tab clears everything.
Last updated 2026-09-15. Everything on this page runs in your browser. Nothing you type or upload leaves your device.