Screen Tearing

Screen tearing is a display artifact where the screen shows parts of two or more frames at once. The image splits along one or more horizontal lines, and the section below each line is offset from the section above it. It is most visible during fast horizontal motion, such as panning in a game or video.

What causes it

A monitor redraws the screen from top to bottom at a fixed rate, such as 60 times per second. If the graphics card delivers a new frame partway through that redraw, the top of the screen still shows the old frame while the bottom shows the new one. The seam between them is the tear.

For everyday use, the fix is to synchronize the two. V-Sync makes the graphics card wait for the display. Adaptive sync (NVIDIA G-Sync, AMD FreeSync) makes the display wait for the graphics card instead, which avoids the added input lag of V-Sync.

Screen tearing in glitch art

For glitch artists, the tear is a useful visual device. It shows the moment a system fails to keep up with itself: one image literally slides out of step with another. It works because it is so recognizable: viewers read it instantly as “digital” and “broken”.

Ways to use it:

• Capture it for real. Turn V-Sync off in a game or video player and screen-record fast camera pans.
• Fake it in stills. Select horizontal strips and shift them sideways. The step-by-step method is the “slice and shift” technique in our Photoshop glitch guide.
• Fake it in motion. Use square Wave Warp slicing with short 2–6 frame spikes, as described in the After Effects glitch guide.
• Combine it. Pair tears with an RGB split or scan lines for a harsher signal-failure look.

Screen tearing is different from analog sync loss on CRTs and VHS tapes. That produces rolling, wobbling or bending images rather than a clean horizontal seam. Both belong to the wider glitch aesthetic.