Short version:
Got a Mac with a Retina display and nasty image-persistence? Use this to “wipe” it down:
Long Version…
If you’re like me and have an iMac late-2014 or newer which comes with the Retina display, then after a time (for me it was about 2 years) you’ve noticed “image persistence” as it’s called or, “burn-in” of items on the desktop that like to ghost themselves over everything else while you’re working.
Over the years I’ve tried dozens of methods for “wiping” the screen with some sort of software trick, all-white screen for hours… none of them worked.
And just in case you’re wondering if it’s a firmware/software thing that could fix it, there isn’t. This is a known hardware issue with IPS wide-viewpoint screens that have ultra-high resolution that as they age, start to show the danged image persistence characteristic. You’ll never permanently get rid of it, it’s physically impossible due to the nature of the IPS screen itself, but I have found a wonderful - and free - tool to temporarily “wipe” it down:
WhiteBox - Plasma 10.6
It’s compatibility stops with Catalina. But all I can tell you is that for whatever reason, this thing actually does a fantastic job of wiping down ghosting, to the point that for my display if it runs for more than 10 minutes my “ghosts” are totally gone.
That is until I’ve been working for more than 8 hours at a stretch, and the ghosting starts to return. Meh…