BOOX Palma 2 · Troubleshooting
Apps look grey, blurry or ghosted on the BOOX Palma 2
Text looks washed out, faint traces of old screens linger, or scrolling smears. On the Palma 2 this is the refresh settings, not a fault.
Symptoms
- Text and menus look grey rather than crisp black.
- Faint images of previous screens stay visible.
- Scrolling a feed or web page leaves a smeared trail.
- One app looks fine and another looks terrible.
Before you start
- This is a settings problem in almost every case, not a broken screen.
- Have five minutes to change settings per affected app.
- A true screen fault shows as a permanent line or blotch that a full refresh never clears.
Which fix do you need?
What are you seeing?
- Everything looks grey, in every app The global refresh mode is set too fast
- One specific app looks bad, others are fine That app needs its own optimisation set
- Old screens linger until a manual refresh Raise the full-refresh frequency
- A permanent line or blotch that never clears Likely a hardware fault
Most common cause
The global refresh mode is left on a fast setting, or a phone-style app has no per-app optimisation set, so Android's normal fast rendering is shown through e-ink with no correction. Grey text is usually a fast mode plus no contrast boost; ghosting is a full-refresh frequency set too low.
Fixes
Fix 1 Fix the global refresh mode
The global mode is the default every app uses until you give it its own. If it is on a fast setting, the whole device looks grey and grainy.
- Swipe down from the top for the control centre and find the refresh mode selector.
- Set it to "HD" or "Regal". Do not leave it on "Fast", "Speed", "Ultrafast" or "A2".
- Tap the manual "full-screen refresh" button once to clear the current ghosting, then check text.
Fix 2 Optimise the specific app that looks bad
Per-app settings override the global mode. A phone app with none set falls back to defaults that often look wrong on a small e-ink screen.
- Long-press the app in the BOOX app drawer and choose "Optimise", or use the control-centre optimisation icon while the app is open.
- Set its refresh mode — HD or Regal for text, Balanced or Fast for a browser or feed reader.
- If text is grey, turn on "enhance contrast" or "bleach whites" a little — not to the maximum.
- If the app's layout is cramped, lower the DPI slider a notch, then reopen the app.
- Turn on "animation filter" to stop fades and slide effects that smear.
Fix 3 Deal with ghosting and rule out a hardware fault
Ghosting is normal e-ink behaviour that a full refresh clears. If a full refresh never clears a mark, it is not ghosting.
- In the affected app's optimisation panel, set "full refresh every N pages" to 1 for the cleanest result, or 3 to 5 as a compromise.
- For KOReader, do this inside KOReader (menu, gear, Screen) and turn BOOX's app-level full refresh off.
- Add a "refresh" shortcut to the Navigation Ball for a one-tap manual clear any time.
- If a line, band or blotch stays after a manual full refresh and a restart, that is a panel fault — contact BOOX support with a photo.
Undo / recovery
All of these are settings changes and are safe to undo. The optimisation panel has a "reset" for each app, and the control centre lets you set the global mode back. Nothing here touches your books or apps.
Related guides
If everything looks grey, fix the global refresh mode first. If it is just one app, that app needs its own optimisation set. Ghosting that clears on a manual full refresh is normal; a mark that never clears is a hardware issue.