How To Fix Black Screen In Valorant? [7 Best Methods]

Update Your Graphics Card Drivers

I’d consider a black screen in Valorant a technical issue that your graphics card can cause. Usually, the issue comes from an outdated graphics driver. Though this may sound bad, a simple way to fix Valorant black screen is updating your drivers to the latest version.

To update your graphics card drivers, follow the steps below:

1. Press your Windows key and type Device Manager.

2. In the Device Manager, look for "Display Adapters".

3. Click on the drop-down menu next to Display Adapters, where you should see the name of your graphics card.

4. Then, right-click on the name of your graphics card and click Update Driver.

5. A new menu will pop up, where you will click Search Automatically For Drivers.

The system will automatically search and update your graphics drivers. If your graphics card drivers are up-to-date, the black screen issue might come from somewhere else.

Run Valorant As An Administrator

The second method is the easiest one on the list, but it can still be highly effective. For this method, we’re just going to run Valorant as an administrator, but this means your Windows user must have admin permissions on the computer you are using.

To run Valorant as an administrator, follow the steps below:

1. Find your Valorant game shortcut on your Desktop.

2. Right-click Valorant and a bunch of options will show up.

3. Click “Run As Administrator”.

4. You will receive a User Account Control pop-up message.

5. On the pop-up that appears, click “Yes”.

And that’s pretty much it! However, you must do this every time you launch Valorant.

Adjust Valorant’s Compatibility Settings

This next step has fixed the problem for me when I had black screen issues, so I highly recommend trying this out. We’re going to change our game’s Compatibility Settings.

To adjust Valorant’s Compatibility Settings, follow the steps below:

1. Find your Valorant game shortcut on your Desktop.

2. Right-click Valorant, and click on “Properties”.

3. From the six options at the top, click on “Compatibility”. Here, we will be doing two things at once.

4. First, under “Compatibility Mode”, check “Run This Program In Compatibility Mode For”, and select “Windows 8”.

5. Next, under “Settings”, check the “Disable Fullscreen Optimizations” box.

6. Once completed, click “Apply” to save your changes.

These settings will change fullscreen mode options for the better. If these two changes do not work, try going back and reverting the “Disable Fullscreen Optimizations” option and restart your Valorant client.

Disable Your Antivirus Software

The fourth reason for a black screen on start up is actually very common, which surprised me. Sometimes, your antivirus software might clash with Valorant, causing black screen issues in your game.

I can’t give a step-by-step guide on disabling your antivirus software since there are hundreds of antivirus applications that have different ways to disable themselves.

However, the goal here is to try temporarily disabling your antivirus software, restarting your computer, and then launching Valorant to see if the issue is resolved. If it doesn’t work, enable your antivirus software again and try the following method.

Set The Valorant Application To High Priority

If Valorant is turning your screen black, it might be because your computer isn’t allocating enough resources to ensure that Valorant runs as best as it can. So, we will set Valorant as a “High Priority” application so our computer will run Valorant with more GPU.

This is a very lengthy process, but it can help improve your Valorant FPS performance, too:

1. First, you must launch the Valorant game and have it open. You will see why we need it opened later.

2. Next, open your Task Manager by holding Ctrl + Shift + Esc, or hit your Windows key and search for Task Manager.

3. In the Task Manager, go to the “Details” section.

4. A list of programs and applications will appear, and we’ll look for Valorant. You can keep pressing “V” to navigate through it quickly.

5. Then, you should see two Valorant tasks, VALORANT.exe and VALORANT-Win64-Shipping.exe.

6. For each of them, right-click them and hover your mouse over Set Priority.

7. I recommend setting the priority to “High”, but if you like streaming Valorant online, you can set it to “Above Normal”.

8. Don’t forget to change the priority for both Valorant tasks!

Once you’ve changed the priority settings, your Valorant will always run at high priority whenever it is opened.

Disable Overlays From Other Applications

Another reason for a black screen in Valorant is that you have other overlays that can cause Valorant black screens, such as Discord, Steam, or other applications. Turning off these overlays can fix black screens and also fix low Valorant FPS.

For this article, I’ll just show you how to turn off Discord’s overlay since it is the most common overlay people have turned on:

1. Open your User Settings on Discord by clicking the Gear Icon next to your “Deafen” button.

2. In your Settings, scroll down to the “Activity Settings” section and click “Game Overlay”.

3. Under “Enable Overlay”, uncheck “Enable In-Game Overlay”.

4. And that’s it. You can close your Discord settings, and it will automatically save your changes.

Usually, the Steam overlay will not turn on for Valorant, but some players have the option to turn on the Steam overlay for non-Steam apps. If you do this, you should turn off your Steam overlay to see if it helps.

Update Windows To The Latest Version

Sometimes, the black screen issue can be caused by an outdated version of Windows. It’ll never hurt to quickly check your Windows version and update it if there is a new one.

Here’s how to easily update Windows:

1. Hit your Windows key + I, which will open the Settings menu. Or, just search for your Settings.

2. On the left-hand side, go to the “Windows Updates” section, which is the option at the bottom.

3. Click on the blue button that says “Check For Updates”.

4. Now, Windows will look for any potential updates. If there is a new update, Windows will ask you for confirmation to Download and Install the update.

5. Once confirmed, your device will restart and give you an estimate of how long the update will take.

If none of the methods work, you should go to the last resort method, which is to uninstall Valorant and reinstall the game.