Eye floaters
Spots, strings, cobwebs, or ring-shaped shadows that drift across vision when you move your eyes.
Open VisualSim →What it looks like
Floaters take many shapes: tiny dark dots, faint strings, branching cobwebs, or a single ring. They appear to drift when you move your eyes and seem to "zoom away" when you try to look directly at them — because they're inside the eye's vitreous gel, they move with inertia, lagging slightly behind your eye movements. They are most noticeable when looking at a plain bright background like a blue sky or a blank white wall.
What causes them
Floaters are tiny clumps of collagen fibers inside the vitreous gel, casting shadows on the retina. They become more common with age, in nearsighted people, after eye surgery, or after a posterior vitreous detachment. Most floaters are harmless and the brain learns to ignore them.
Also known as
Vitreous floaters · Myodesopsias · Muscae volitantes