---

title: Splashscreen description: Control the splash screen for your app.

AppVeyor	Travis CI

cordova-plugin-splashscreen

This plugin is required to work with splash screens. This plugin displays and hides a splash screen during application launch.

Report issues with this plugin on the Apache Cordova issue tracker.

Installation

// npm hosted (new) id
cordova plugin add cordova-plugin-splashscreen

// you may also install directly from this repo
cordova plugin add https://github.com/apache/cordova-plugin-splashscreen.git

Supported Platforms

• Android
• iOS
• Windows (cordova-windows version >= 4.4.0 is required)
• Browser

Note: Extended splashscreen does not require the plugin on Windows (as opposed to Android and iOS) in case you don't use the plugin API, i.e. programmatic hide/show.

iOS-specific information

There are two mechanisms for displaying a launch screen on iOS:

1. Legacy launch images: images are sized exactly for the device's screen size. Does not support the iPad Pro 12.9's native resolution or split-screen/slide-over multitasking.

2. Launch storyboard images: Images are sized based on scale, idiom, and size classes. Supports all devices, and can be used with split-screen/slide-over multitasking.

Apple is moving away from legacy launch images. There is no official support for providing a native-resolution launch image for the iPad Pro 12.9 or for providing launch images that work with split-screen multitasking or slide-over. If your app doesn't need to support these contexts, then you can continue to use legacy launch images for as long as you like.

The preferred method of providing launch images is to use a launch storyboard. For native app developers, the ideal launch storyboard is an unpopulated version of the app's user interface at launch. For non-native app developers who don't wish to learn Interface Builder, however, this plugin simulates the legacy launch image method as much as is feasible.

Legacy launch images

If you choose to use legacy launch images, you will use the following syntax in config.xml:

Technically the filename for the src attribute can be anything you want; the filenames are used because they match what will be used when your project is compiled. The width and height attributes determine which launch images are displayed on which devices as follows:

width	height	device (orientation)
320	480	All non-retina iPhones and iPods
640	960	iPhone 4/4s (portrait)
640	1136	iPhone 5/5s/SE (portrait)
750	1334	iPhone 6/6s/7 (portrait)
1242	2208	iPhone 6+/6s+/7+ (portrait)
2208	1242	iPhone 6+/6s+/7+ (landscape)
768	1024	All non-retina iPads (portrait)
1024	768	All non-retina iPads (landscape)
1536	2048	All retina iPads (portrait)
2048	1536	All retina iPads (landscape)

Note: It is vitally important that the source image actually matches the size specified in the width and height attributes. If it does not, the device may fail to render it properly, if at all.

Launch storyboard images

In order to support newer form factors and split-screen/slide-over multitasking, you should use launch storyboard images. These are similar to the legacy launch images above, but there are crucial differences:

• images are not specific to a given device.

• images are scaled to fill the available viewport (while maintaining the aspect ratio).

• the outer edges of the images will be cropped, and the amount will vary based on device an viewport.

• there is no need to provide an image for each possible device, viewport, and orientation; iOS will choose the best image for the situation automatically.

Designing launch storyboard images

The key to designing a launch storyboard image is understanding that the edges of the image will almost certainly be cropped. Therefore, one should not place any important information near the edges of any images provided to the launch storyboard. Only the center is a safe area, and this all but guarantees that following Apple's advice of presenting an unpopulated user interface will not work well.

Instead, the following tips should enable you to create a launch image that works across a multitude of form factors, viewports, and orientations:

• Important graphics (logos, icons, titles) should be centered. The safe bounding region will vary, so you will need to test to ensure that the important graphics are never cropped. Better yet, don't supply any important graphics in the first place.

  • You can fine-tune the placement and size of these graphics, but you don't have the same fine-grained control as you did with legacy launch images.

• Use a simple color wash. If you use two colors, you'll want one color to fill the top half of the image, and the second to fill the bottom half. If you use a gradient, you'll probably want to ensure that the middle of the gradient lines up with the center of the image.

• Don't worry about pixel perfection -- because the images are scaled, there's almost no chance the images will be perfectly fit to the pixel grid. Since all supported iOS devices use retina screens, users will be hard pressed to notice it anyway.

It is important to understand the concept of scale, idiom, and size class traits in order to use launch storyboard images effectively. Of the images supplied to the launch storyboard, iOS will choose the image that best matches the device and viewport and render that image. It is possible to supply only one launch image if so desired, but it is also possible to fine-tune the displayed launch image based on traits. When fine-tuning, one can ignore traits that aren't targeted or supported by the app.

> Note: If you are using launch storyboard images, there is no need to include legacy images. If you do, the legacy images will be copied, but not used.

Scale

scale	devices
1x	All non-retina devices
2x	Most retina devices
3x	iPhone 6+/6s+,7s+

In general, you'll want to supply 2x and 3x images. Cordova only supports retina devices now, so there's no point in supplying 1x images.

Idioms

idiom	devices
ipad	All iPads
iphone	All iPhones and iPod Touches
universal	All devices

You only need to provide universal images unless you need to fine-tune for a specific device idiom.

Size classes

There are two size classes applies to both screen axes. Narrow viewports are considered to be the "compact" size class, and remaining viewports are considered "regular". When supplying images to Xcode, however, one must choose between "any & compact" and "any & regular". To stay consistent with the native terminology, this feature will match based on "any" and "compact". any will match regular-sized viewports.

Note: this feature uses com as an abbreviation for "compact" classes.

The following classes are supported by this feature:

width	height	orientation
any	any	any
com	any	portrait
any	com	landscape (wide)
com	com	landscape (narrow)

To see the complete list of size classes associated with devices and viewports, see .

Single-image launch screen

If your launch image is simple, you may be able to avoid creating a lot of different launch images and supply only one. The launch image needs to meet the following requirements:

• the image should be square

• the image should be large enough to fit on an iPad Pro 12.9": 2732x2732

• anything important should fit within the center

Keep in mind that the image will be cropped, possibly quite severely, depending upon the viewport.

Once the image is created, you can include it in your project by adding the following to config.xml:

Because only one image is provided, iOS will utilize it in every context.

Multi-image launch screen

If a single launch image won't meet your needs, you will probably need to supply at least six images, if not more. Furthermore, keep in mind that it will not be possible to fine tune the image to a specific device, but only to a device class, display factor, and viewport size.

If you don't need to target images to a specific idiom, you should create six images, as follows:

scale	idiom	width	height	size	filename
2x*	universal	any	any	2732x2732	Default@2x~universal~anyany.png
2x	universal	com	any	1278x2732	Default@2x~universal~comany.png
2x	universal	com	com	1334x750	Default@2x~universal~comcom.png
3x*	universal	any	any	2208x2208	Default@3x~universal~anyany.png
3x	universal	any	com	2208x1242	Default@3x~universal~anycom.png
3x	universal	com	any	1242x2208	Default@3x~universal~comany.png

* this image is required in order for iOS utilize the other images within this scale and idiom.

> Note: If the 3x sizes look small too you, that's because there's only one device class that currently has a 3x density: the iPhone 6+/6s+/7+.

The above looks like the following snippet when present in config.xml:

Should one need to further fine tune based upon device idiom, one can do so. This might look like so:

scale	idiom	width	height	size	filename
2x*	iphone	any	any	1334x1334	Default@2x~iphone~anyany.png
2x	iphone	com	any	750x1334	Default@2x~iphone~comany.png
2x	iphone	com	com	1334x750	Default@2x~iphone~comcom.png
3x*	iphone	any	any	2208x2208	Default@3x~iphone~anyany.png
3x	iphone	any	com	2208x1242	Default@3x~iphone~anycom.png
3x	iphone	com	any	1242x2208	Default@3x~iphone~comany.png
2x*	ipad	any	any	2732x2732	Default@2x~ipad~anyany.png
2x	ipad	com	any	1278x2732	Default@2x~ipad~comany.png

* this image is required in order for iOS utilize the other images within this scale and idiom.

The above looks like the following in config.xml:

Quirks and Known Issues

1. App on target may not reflect changes to images Once you run the app on a target, iOS caches the launch image. Unfortunately, when you chance the images, iOS does not invalidate the cache, which means you'll still see the old launch image. You should either: delete the app, or reset content & settings (simulator).

2. Simulator may not show expected images when launched from CLI When Xcode deploys to a specific simulator, it only copies the assets that match the simulator's characteristics. For example, if you try to run an app on the iPhone 6s Plus simulator, only @3x launch images are copied. When compiling from the CLI, however, the default is to assume an iPhone 5s, which means only @2x launch images are copied. Unless your launch images are markedly different, chances are good the difference would go unnoticed, but this does mean that the only accurate method of testing is to test on a physical device.

3. anyany must be provided for other variations to be used If you don't provide an anyany version of the launch image for a specific scale and idiom, the other variations (like anycom, comany, and comcom) will ignored.

Windows-specific information

Splash screen images can be defined using the MRT concept.
If you specify src="res/windows/splashscreen.png" the following files will be copied into the application's images folder:
res/windows/splashscreen.png | res/windows/splashscreen.scale-100.png, res/windows/splashscreen.scale-125.png, etc.
The following are supported:

Scale, %	Project	Width	Height	Filename
100	Windows 10/8.1	620	300	splashscreen.png | splashscreen.scale-100.png
125	Windows 10	775	375	splashscreen.scale-125.png
150	Windows 10	930	450	splashscreen.scale-150.png
200	Windows 10	1240	600	splashscreen.scale-200.png
400	Windows 10	2480	1200	splashscreen.scale-400.png
140	Windows 8.1	868	420	splashscreen.scale-140.png
180	Windows 8.1	1116	540	splashscreen.scale-180.png
100	Windows Phone 8.1	480	800	splashscreenphone.png | splashscreenphone.scale-100.png
140	Windows Phone 8.1	672	1120	splashscreenphone.scale-140.png
240	Windows Phone 8.1	1152	1920	splashscreenphone.scale-240.png

Note: SplashScreens size for Windows 10 project should not exceed 200 KBytes.
Note: Supported formats are .png, .jpg, .jpeg. Mixing of the extensions within a target is not supported. I.e. you can have splashscreen.jpg and splashscreenphone.png but not splashscreen.scale-100.png, splashscreen.scale-400.jpg.
Note: You may need to reopen Visual Studio solution after changing the images and doing a cordova prepare for the changes to take effect.

Example Configuration

In the top-level config.xml file (not the one in platforms), add configuration elements like those specified here.

Please notice that the value of the "src" attribute is relative to the project root directory and not to the www directory (see Directory structure below). You can name the source image whatever you like. The internal name in the app is determined by Cordova.

Directory structure:

projectRoot
    hooks
    platforms
    plugins
    www
        css
        img
        js
    res
        screen
            android
            ios
            windows

Preferences

config.xml

• AutoHideSplashScreen (boolean, default to true). Indicates whether to hide splash screen automatically or not. Splash screen hidden after amount of time specified in the SplashScreenDelay preference.

• SplashScreenDelay (number, default to 3000). Amount of time in milliseconds to wait before automatically hide splash screen.

Note also that this value used to be seconds, and not milliseconds, so values less than 30 will still be treated as seconds. ( Consider this a deprecated patch that will disapear in some future version. )

To disable the splashscreen add the following preference to config.xml:

Windows Quirk: You should disable the splashscreen in case you are updating the entire document body dynamically (f.e. with a SPA router) to avoid affecting UI/controls.
Note that you should also directly reference WinJS/base.js in the page HTML in this case to avoid the issues with activation context (CB-11658).

iOS Quirk: to disable the splashscreen on ios platform you should also add `` to config.xml.

• FadeSplashScreen (boolean, defaults to true): Set to false to prevent the splash screen from fading in and out when its display state changes.

• FadeSplashScreenDuration (float, defaults to 500): Specifies the number of milliseconds for the splash screen fade effect to execute.

Note: FadeSplashScreenDuration is included into SplashScreenDelay, for example if you have and defined in config.xml:

• 00:00 - splashscreen is shown
• 00:02 - fading has started
• 00:03 - splashscreen is hidden

Turning the fading off via `` technically means fading duration to be 0 so that in this example the overall splash delay will still be 3 seconds.

Note: This only applies to the app startup - you need to take the fading timeout into account when manually showing/hiding the splashscreen in the code:

navigator.splashscreen.show();
window.setTimeout(function () {
    navigator.splashscreen.hide();
}, splashDuration - fadeDuration);

• ShowSplashScreenSpinner (boolean, defaults to true): Set to false to hide the splash-screen spinner.

Android Quirks

In your config.xml, you can add the following preferences:

"SplashMaintainAspectRatio" preference is optional. If set to true, splash screen drawable is not stretched to fit screen, but instead simply "covers" the screen, like CSS "background-size:cover". This is very useful when splash screen images cannot be distorted in any way, for example when they contain scenery or text. This setting works best with images that have large margins (safe areas) that can be safely cropped on screens with different aspect ratios.

The plugin reloads splash drawable whenever orientation changes, so you can specify different drawables for portrait and landscape orientations.

"SplashShowOnlyFirstTime" preference is also optional and defaults to true. When set to true splash screen will only appear on application launch. However, if you plan to use navigator.app.exitApp() to close application and force splash screen appear on next launch, you should set this property to false (this also applies to closing the App with Back button).

"SplashScreenSpinnerColor" preference is also optional and is ignored when not set. Setting it to a valid color name or HEX color code will change the color of the spinner on Android 5.0+ devices.

Browser Quirks

You can use the following preferences in your config.xml:

Note: SplashScreen value should be absolute in order to work in a sub-page. The SplashScreen value is used only for the browser platform. The value will be ignored for other platforms.

iOS Quirks

• In iOS, the splashscreen images are called launch images. These images are mandatory on iOS.

Windows Quirks

• SplashScreenSpinnerColor (string, defaults to system accent color): hash, rgb notation or CSS color name.

• SplashScreenBackgroundColor (string, defaults to #464646): hex notation.

Methods

• splashscreen.show
• splashscreen.hide

splashscreen.hide

Dismiss the splash screen.

navigator.splashscreen.hide();

iOS Quirk

The config.xml file's AutoHideSplashScreen setting must be false. To delay hiding the splash screen for two seconds, add a timer such as the following in the deviceready event handler:

setTimeout(function() {
    navigator.splashscreen.hide();
}, 2000);

splashscreen.show

Displays the splash screen.

navigator.splashscreen.show();

Your application cannot call navigator.splashscreen.show() until the app has started and the deviceready event has fired. But since typically the splash screen is meant to be visible before your app has started, that would seem to defeat the purpose of the splash screen. Providing some configuration in config.xml will automatically show the splash screen immediately after your app launch and before it has fully started and received the deviceready event. For this reason, it is unlikely you need to call navigator.splashscreen.show() to make the splash screen visible for app startup.