Samsung Galaxy S20 Touchscreen Unresponsive

If the touchscreen of your Samsung Galaxy S20 is slow, unresponsive, or responding incorrectly, use this problem page to learn about what is wrong with your phone and how to fix the problem. The issue may be experienced when you touch one area of the screen and the interface selects an option on the other end, or when nothing you touch is selected.

If you aren’t sure whether your touch input is being registered incorrectly because your phone is failing to display images at all, try our Samsung Galaxy S20 Black Screen solution page instead!

If your touch screen only responds incorrectly or is unresponsive when using an application (or you aren't sure!) the first thing you should do is force restart your phone. To restart your Galaxy S20:

1. Press and hold the Volume Down button and the Power/Bixby button.
2. Wait 10 seconds while continuing to hold the buttons until your phone screen goes black.
3. Once the phone starts back up, check to see if the touchscreen issue persists.

If restarting your phone did not work, try booting the phone in Safe Mode:

1. Press and hold the Power/Bixby and Volume Down buttons for ten seconds or until the screen turns black. This initiates a force reset.
2. As your phone powers on and the Samsung logo appears, press and hold down the Volume Down button until the phone starts up in Safe Mode.

If the screen is responsive in Safe Mode, it indicates that an app was the cause of the unresponsive screen. To fix this, delete the application(s) you were using when the touchscreen stopped responding, or those that were installed just before the problem started occurring. You can use a notification or a force restart to get your phone out of Safe Mode to check whether the problem persists. If it does, simply reboot your phone back to Safe Mode and continue deleting applications until the problem is resolved. If you aren't sure which app was causing the problem, then start deleting the most recently installed applications one by one.

Screen protectors have been known to affect the sensitivity input of the Samsung Galaxy S20 touchscreen. The problem may present itself immediately after the protector is installed, or start acting up when the screen protector is damaged. If your phone is receiving no touch input at all, remove the screen protector to see if that solves the problem.

If your screen still accepts some touch input, you can enhance your phone's touchscreen sensitivity to try to use the same screen protector.

1. Open Settings the settings app on your phone.
2. Select Display from the settings menu.
3. Select Touch sensitivity.
4. Toggle ON.

If replacing your screen protector, try looking for one that is designed specifically for the Galaxy S20, and ensure that user reviews don’t indicate that the screen obstructs touch sensitivity.

Dirt, dust, oil and water can all mess with your phone's touchscreen. Dirt and dust may reduce the conductivity of your fingers on the digitizer, while water and oils can cause the digitizer to register touch input where there is none. To remedy this issue, simply clean your phone's touchscreen:

1. Turn your phone off.
   • You may be able to just put the phone to sleep, but touch input might turn the screen on while cleaning, and you will see the dirt easier if the phone's backlight remains off.
2. Use a clean, dry microfiber cloth and wipe the touchscreen (screensaver separate) in one repeating direction.
   • If necessary, apply a small amount of water or isopropyl alcohol (preferred) to dampen the cloth.
   • Or, consider using a liquid screen cleaning solution. You can also make your own cleaner using ten parts distilled water and one part white vinegar.
3. Wipe the screen clear of any remaining liquid with the dry part of the microfiber cloth. Leave any remaining moisture on the screen to air-dry.

Temporary files, an abundance of background processes, and system glitches can all cause your phone's screen to freeze, becoming unresponsive to further input. Most system halts will be remedied by restarting the phone, so if you haven't already, perform a force restart on your phone. To force restart your Galaxy S20:

1. Press and hold the Volume Down button and the Power/Bixby button.
2. Wait 10 seconds while continuing to hold the buttons until your phone screen goes black.
3. Once the phone starts back up, check to see if the touch screen issue persists.

If this happens often, or if your touchscreen becomes responsive but is still behaving erratically, you can optimize the phone by deleting or disabling unused applications or clearing the device’s data storage. To optimize your Galaxy S20's performance:

1. Navigate to Settings.
2. Select Device care.
3. Select Optimize now.

If the screen is still acting faulty, then you may try backing up your personal data (videos, photos, music files, etc.) and performing a factory reset on your phone. This option will delete all of the files and applications from your phone, starting it back up as if it was new. While this may remedy your problem in a less invasive way than some other options, you should only do so if you are fairly confident that the issue is a software problem. To perform a factory reset on your Galaxy S20:

1. Hold the Power/Bixby and Volume Down buttons to turn off your phone.
2. Press and hold the Power/Bixby and Volume Down buttons until you see the Android logo.
3. Release both buttons once the Android logo pops up.
   • The Recovery screen menu will now appear.
4. Use the Volume Down button to navigate the menu and highlight 'Wipe data/factory reset.'
5. Press the Power/Bixby button to select 'Wipe data/factory reset.'
6. Use Volume Down to highlight Yes.
7. Press the Power/Bixby button to confirm the action to clear your phone data.

The digitizer is a layer of sensitized glass integrated into the display of the phone that picks up the analog signals of a touch or swipe from your finger and converts it into a digital signal that your phone can comprehend. Because the digitizer is integrated into the OLED display on most phones (including the Galaxy S20 line), a broken digitizer likely means that you’ll have to replace the entire screen of your phone.

If your touchscreen stopped working after visible damage appeared on the screen (it is cracked, discolored, blank, or unclear), the digitizer is likely broken. The digitizer may also be faulty without showing visible damage if it stopped working after the phone sustained a heavy impact or water ingress.

 If the digitizer is damaged, you can replace it using one of our Galaxy S20 screen replacement guides:

• Samsung Galaxy S20 Screen Replacement with a new screen
• Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus Screen Replacement with a new screen
• Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra Screen Replacement with a new screen

Factory Reset - Deletes all the phone’s data, so be sure to perform a backup beforehand.

1. Navigate to Settings.
2. Select General Management.
3. Select Reset.
4. Select Factory data reset.
5. Scroll down to the bottom and select Reset.
6. Confirm that all data will be lost and cannot be recovered.
7. Tap on Delete All.
8. Enter your Samsung Account Password.
9. Tap on Confirm.

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