What does it mean if the border is cut off at the edges?

Your display is overscanning — cropping a percentage of the image at every edge and scaling the rest to fill the screen. This is common on TVs and fixable through a picture-size setting like "Just Scan," "Screen Fit," or "1:1 Pixel Mapping."

The border looks fine but the circle is an oval — what's wrong?

That points to incorrect aspect-ratio scaling rather than overscan — the display is stretching the image non-uniformly, often because it's not running at its true native resolution. Check your OS display settings to confirm you're at native resolution.

Why don't I notice overscan when watching movies or TV shows?

Video content is typically framed with margin around the edges already, so a small crop rarely removes anything important. It becomes obvious on a desktop, where taskbars, docks, and browser UI often sit right at the screen edge with no margin to spare.

Does overscan affect gaming?

Yes — overscan can crop UI elements like minimaps, health bars, or subtitles that games position near the screen edge, and most TVs' "Game Mode" picture setting disables overscan as part of reducing input lag, so enabling Game Mode often fixes both issues at once.

Is this the same as HDMI black bars?

No — black bars are the display correctly showing content at its original aspect ratio without stretching, leaving empty space rather than cropping anything. Overscan is the opposite problem: cropping real image content that should be visible.

Geometry Alignment Test

The Geometry Alignment Test renders a full-frame border, a regular grid, and a perfect circle so you can check whether your display is stretching, skewing, or cropping the picture. Click Enter Fullscreen and look for two things: the border should stay fully visible right to the screen edge — if it's cut off, your TV or monitor is overscanning and cropping part of the image — and the circle should render perfectly round, since an oval shape means the pixels aren't square or the aspect ratio is being scaled incorrectly. Most relevant if you're using a TV as a monitor, where overscan silently eats a chunk of your desktop. The ips glow test online runs fullscreen so you can inspect your panel edge-to-edge under real viewing conditions.

Geometry & Overscan Canvas

The outer border sits one pixel inside the true edge — if any side of it is missing once you're fullscreen, that edge is being overscanned and cropped.

What Overscan Is and Why TVs Still Do It

Overscan is a leftover practice from analog CRT broadcast television, where the edges of the picture were always slightly cropped to hide irregularities at the tube's edge — broadcasters compensated by keeping important content safely inside those edges. Many TVs still apply this same crop-and-scale behavior by default, even though modern digital displays don't have the physical reason for it anymore. When a TV overscans an HDMI signal from a computer, it crops a percentage of the picture at every edge and scales the remainder to fill the screen, which is exactly what the full-frame border in this test is designed to catch — if the border isn't fully visible right up to the screen edge, some of your image is being cut off. The clouding test works on any screen — laptop, external monitor, or TV — with nothing to install.

Reading the Circle: Aspect Ratio and Pixel Squareness

The circle in this test exists for a different reason than the border. Even when a display isn't overscanning, it can still be scaling the image at the wrong aspect ratio — stretching it wider or taller than it should be. A perfect circle is a very sensitive way to catch this: your eye is much better at spotting an oval than at judging whether a rectangle's proportions are slightly off. If the circle renders as an oval — wider than tall, or taller than wide — the display (or your GPU's scaling settings) is applying non-uniform scaling, which distorts everything on screen, not just this test pattern.

How to Fix Overscan on Your TV or Monitor

Most TVs have a dedicated picture setting to disable overscan, though the exact name varies by manufacturer: look for "Just Scan" (LG), "Screen Fit" or "PC Size" (Samsung), "Overscan" toggle (Sony), or simply "1:1 Pixel Mapping" in the picture size or aspect ratio menu. Setting the TV's input to a "PC" or "Game" mode often disables overscan automatically as a side effect, since these modes are built around pixel-accurate, low-latency signal handling. If overscan is happening at the GPU level instead of the display level — common with older NVIDIA and AMD drivers — check your graphics control panel's scaling settings and set scaling to be performed by the display (or disabled entirely) rather than the GPU.

If the Circle Is an Oval Instead

An oval result, separate from overscan, usually points to the display being fed a resolution it isn't natively suited for and then stretching the image to fill the panel. Confirm your display is actually running at its true native resolution (check your OS display settings), since running below native and letting the panel upscale is the most common cause of this specific distortion.

Why This Matters More When Using a TV as a Monitor

Overscan is often invisible or barely noticeable when you're watching video content, since movies and shows are typically framed with some margin anyway. It becomes a real usability problem the moment you use a TV as a desktop monitor: a cropped edge can hide your taskbar, dock, or browser tabs, and text near the screen edge in productivity apps can be cut off entirely. This is precisely the scenario this test is built for — confirm the full desktop is actually visible before you settle into a TV-as-monitor setup for daily use.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does it mean if the border is cut off at the edges?: Your display is overscanning — cropping a percentage of the image at every edge and scaling the rest to fill the screen. This is common on TVs and fixable through a picture-size setting like "Just Scan," "Screen Fit," or "1:1 Pixel Mapping."
The border looks fine but the circle is an oval — what's wrong?: That points to incorrect aspect-ratio scaling rather than overscan — the display is stretching the image non-uniformly, often because it's not running at its true native resolution. Check your OS display settings to confirm you're at native resolution.
Why don't I notice overscan when watching movies or TV shows?: Video content is typically framed with margin around the edges already, so a small crop rarely removes anything important. It becomes obvious on a desktop, where taskbars, docks, and browser UI often sit right at the screen edge with no margin to spare.
Does overscan affect gaming?: Yes — overscan can crop UI elements like minimaps, health bars, or subtitles that games position near the screen edge, and most TVs' "Game Mode" picture setting disables overscan as part of reducing input lag, so enabling Game Mode often fixes both issues at once.
Is this the same as HDMI black bars?: No — black bars are the display correctly showing content at its original aspect ratio without stretching, leaving empty space rather than cropping anything. Overscan is the opposite problem: cropping real image content that should be visible.