Remove Screen Scratches with Toothpaste

We like to call it "Disbelief of Suspension." That moment—frozen in time—where your touch-screen cell phone is suspended in the air, somewhere between the cozy grip of your hand and the rough gravel of the terrain below. In that single moment, your mind will think a thousand thoughts. You're hoping that you're just imagining your phone dangling in the air, screen down, about to ride the pavement. We've been lucky. Every time we come out of that worried coma, all that emerges is a slightly scratched screen. It's easy to fix with a little toothpaste, and here's how.

We should probably make room for a tube of toothpaste in our 3-ingredient wonder-fix cleaning kit. The same solution that gets your chompers pearly white can also make a scratched DVD playable and make stained white gadgets look shiny and new.

And if you've spotted a few scratches in your phone's—or any other device's—screen, toothpaste comes to the rescue again:

Just dab a bit of toothpaste at the end of a cotton swab or a soft cloth. Gently rub it in to your screen's scratches in a circular motion, being careful not to rub too hard and remove any surface coating. Then wipe the whole thing down with a soft, barely-damp cloth.

You really need to find toothpaste, so if you're a tooth gel family you'll need to grab an extra tube at the store. And the trick is to just use a tiny bit of toothpaste—not like the picture above!

via DVice

(Images: Photoillustration, Flickr member XiXiDu licensed for use under Creative Commons)

Comments (15)

does this really work? any specific types people have used?

Does it have to be flouride toothpaste? What is the ingredient that makes it work?

I've used this for watch faces in the past. It works great. I believe you need actual paste, and not gel. I imagine it would work well enough on anything glass, you are basically polishing out the scratches (so it will only work on shallow damage).

it's not the fluoride, it's the common abrasives in toothpaste that buff out the scratch.

the picture taken above is actually a composite of two photos. the original is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Toothpasteonbrush.jpg. That would be way too much toothpaste for any scratch.

What about the oleophobic coating on the iPhone? Wouldn't this procedure remove that as well?

hahahaha nice observation scoot! lolz

I wonder if this would work on glass-lens sunglasses...

I use it to take clear-coat scratches and rust stains out of car paint.

Why don't you make a video?

If you used screen protectors you wouldn't have to worry anyway. ;)

I have a huge scratch on my iphone that is driving me insane. I definitely need to invest in a screen protector, but I'm going to try this tonight. Anyone here have success on the iphone?

I tried this on a glass-top coffee table with no luck. Any other suggestions?

Hollywood, tempered glass, which is what tables are made with, is much harder than regular glass. Which means to buff scratches out of it, unfortunately you're going to need to go with professional grade materials - real buffing compounds and probably even a power tool so your arm doesn't fall off from how much buffing you'll have to do!

If you've got a hand drill, a simple glass polishing kit made for cars would probably do, since they're made to work on tempered glass as well.

I wonder if this would work on scratches on my car windshield. I stupidly tried to scrape snow off my windshield with a steel shovel, because I didn't have a plastic scraper on hand. Yes, let's emphasize the word STUPID here.

The scratch has to be very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very (have I emphasized this enough) light to work. I have what I would call a medium scratch just off the screen but on the glass for my iPhone and it really didn't do a thing. It did however help an almost imperceptible other scratch that I had to hunt for to test. My thought is that if you are that concerned about a certain scratch on your device, it is probably too deep for this to help.