A terminal display scanning method for optical fingerprint recognition is provided, the method includes: if a start operation on a terminal screen is detected, obtaining a first vector set, where the first vector set includes A data vectors that are mutually orthogonal or mutually quasi-orthogonal, each of the data vectors includes a plurality of data elements, and A is an integer greater than 1; sequentially using the data elements in each of the data vectors to control light emitting of minimum pixel units in a fingerprint recognition area until controlling light emitting of all the minimum pixel units in the fingerprint recognition area is completed, to obtain a second vector set corresponding to the fingerprint recognition area, where the second vector set carries fingerprint information; and demodulating the second vector set by using the first vector set to obtain all fingerprint information in the fingerprint recognition area.