Broken Screen Prank

What you can use it for

• ▹Hand over a 'cracked' laptop or phone for an instant reaction
• ▹April Fools' prank that needs no app install
• ▹Props for videos and skits
• ▹A cracked-glass effect over your own image

How to make the broken screen prank look real

The prank works when the cracked screen looks like their screen. A cracked wallpaper is funny; their own desktop suddenly shattered is the moment people actually gasp. There are three ways to get there:

• Capture my screen (Windows, Mac, Chromebook): choose My image, press Capture my screen, pick Entire screen, then switch to their desktop. Five seconds later one frame is taken and sharing stops on its own. Come back, press Fullscreen, and the shattered glass sits on top of their real desktop.
• Paste a screenshot: press PrtScn or Win+Shift+S on Windows, or ⌘+Ctrl+Shift+3 on a Mac, then press Ctrl+V or ⌘+V on this page. No permission prompt at all.
• Phones and tablets: screenshot the home screen, open this page, choose My image, pick the screenshot, then tap Fullscreen. On iPhone, add the page to your home screen first for a true full-screen view.

Why these cracks look like real broken glass

Most cracked-screen pranks paste the same flat crack picture on every screen. Real glass doesn't break that way, so every tap here generates a new fracture that behaves like the real thing:

• Long, almost straight fractures run out from the impact, with sharp kinks where the glass gave way.
• Broken rings form a spider web close to the impact — patchy and slightly bowed, never perfect circles.
• Each shard sits at a slightly different angle, so the picture underneath is shifted by a few pixels and changes brightness from shard to shard, exactly as light refracts through shattered glass.
• The impact point is crushed into tiny white fragments, and fine hairline cracks spray off the main breaks.
• With Ink bleed, liquid crystal leaks into an irregular black stain with purple and cyan edges that creeps along the cracks. Severe adds the colored lines, dead columns, and flicker of a dying LCD.

Prank ideas that land

• The self-cracking laptop: set Crack by itself to 10 seconds, capture their screen, go fullscreen, and walk away. It shatters while they're looking at it.
• The dropped phone: load a screenshot of their home screen, go fullscreen, and hand the phone back face down.
• The office monitor: capture the screen before a meeting and use Severe damage for the full dying-panel effect.
• Videos and reactions: tap in time with a sound effect for B-roll that needs no editing.

Want a different kind of panic? Try the fake blue screen of death or a never-ending fake Windows update.

How to undo it

Nothing is damaged and nothing is installed. Press Esc to leave fullscreen and close the tab, or press Fix the screen to clear every crack. Screenshots and captured frames stay in the browser's memory on that device and disappear when the tab closes — they are never uploaded.

Frequently asked questions

More pranks & fake screens