Splash screens

Starting in Android 12, the SplashScreen API enables a new app launch animation for all apps when running on a device with Android 12 or higher. This includes an into-app motion at launch, a splash screen showing your app icon, and a transition to your app itself. A SplashScreen is a Window and therefore occludes an Activity.

This experience brings standard design elements to every app launch, but it’s also customizable so your app can maintain its unique branding.

In addition to using the SplashScreen platform API, you can also use the SplashScreen compat library, which wraps the SplashScreen API.

How the splash screen works

When a user launches an app while the app's process is not running (a cold start) or the Activity has not been created (a warm start), the following events occur. (The splash screen is never shown during a hot start.)

1. The system shows the splash screen using themes and any animations that you've defined.

2. When the app is ready, the splash screen is dismissed and the app is displayed.

Elements and mechanics of the splash screen

The elements of the splash screen are defined by XML resource files in the Android Manifest. There are light and dark mode versions for each.

The customizable elements of a splash screen consist of the app icon, icon background, and window background:

Be aware of the following considerations regarding these elements:

1 The app icon should be a vector drawable, and it can be static or animated. Although animations can have an unlimited duration, we recommend not exceeding 1,000 milliseconds. By default, the launcher icon is used.

2 The icon background is optional, and is useful if you need more contrast between the icon and the window background. If you use an adaptive icon, its background is displayed if there is enough contrast with the window background. 3 As with adaptive icons, one-third of the foreground is masked.

4 The window background consists of a single opaque color. If the window background is set and is a plain color, it is used by default if the attribute is not set.

Splash Screen dimensions

The splash screen icon uses the same specifications as Adaptive icons, as follows:

• Branded image: This should be 200×80 dp.
• App icon with an icon background: This should be 240×240 dp, and fit within a circle of 160 dp in diameter.
• App icon without an icon background: This should be 288×288 dp, and fit within a circle of 192 dp in diameter.

For example, if the full size of an image is 300×300 dp, the icon needs to fit within a circle with a diameter of 200 dp. Everything outside the circle will be invisible (masked).

Splash Screen animations and the launch sequence

Additional latency is often associated with launching an app on a cold start. Adding an animated icon to your splash screen has obvious aesthetic appeal and provides a more premium experience, plus there’s an additional benefit: user research shows that perceived startup time is less when viewing an animation.

A splash screen animation is embedded within the following launch sequence components.

1. Enter animation: This consists of the system view to the splash screen. This is controlled by the system and is not customizable.

2. Splash screen: The splash screen can be customized, allowing you to supply your own logo animation and branding. It must meet the requirements described on this page to work properly.

3. Exit animation: This consists of the animation run that hides the splash screen. If you want to customize it, you'll have access to the SplashScreenView and its icon and can run any animation on them, with settings for transform, opacity, and color. In that case, the splash screen needs to be manually removed when the animation is done.

When running the icon animation, app launch gives you the option to skip the sequence in cases where the app is ready earlier. Either the app triggers onResume() or the splash screen times out automatically so make sure the motion can be comfortably skipped. The splash screen should only be dismissed with onResume() when the app is stable from a visual standpoint, so no additional spinners needed. Introducing an incomplete interface can be jarring for users and may give an impression of unpredictability or lack of polish.

Splash screen animation requirements

Your splash screen should adhere to the following specifications:

• Set a single window background color with no transparency. Day and Night mode are both supported with the Splash Screen compat library.

• Make sure the animated icon meets the following specifications:

  • Format: This must be an Animated Vector Drawable (AVD) XML.
  • Dimensions: An AVD icon must be four times the size of an adaptive icon, as follows:
    • The icon area must be 432 dp (in other words, four times 108 dp of the area of an unmasked adaptive icon).
    • The inner two-thirds of the image is visible on the launcher icon, and must be 288 dp (in other words, four times the 72 dp that makes up the inner masked area of an adaptive icon).
  • Duration: We recommend not exceeding 1,000 ms on phones. You can use a delayed start, but this can’t be longer than 166 ms. If the app startup time is longer than 1,000 ms, consider a looping animation.

• Establish an appropriate time to dismiss the splash screen, which happens as your app draws its first frame. You can further customize this as described on this page in Keep the splash screen on-screen for longer periods.

Splash Screen resources

Download our example starter kit, which demonstrates how to create, format, and export an animation into an AVD.

• Adobe After Effects project file of the animation
• Final exported AVD XML file
• Example gif of the animation

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Customize the splash screen in your app

By default, SplashScreen uses the windowBackground of your theme if it's a single color and the launcher icon. The customization of the splash screen is done by adding attributes to the app theme.

Your app's splash screen can be customized in any of the following ways:

• Setting theme attributes to change its appearance

• Keeping it on-screen for a longer period

• Customizing the animation for dismissing the splash screen

Set a theme for the splash screen to change its appearance

You can specify the following attributes in your Activity theme to customize the splash screen for your app. If you already have a legacy splash screen implementation that uses attributes like android:windowBackground, consider providing an alternate resource file for Android 12 and higher.

1. Use windowSplashScreenBackground to fill the background with a specific single color:

   <item name="android:windowSplashScreenBackground">@color/...</item>
   

2. Use windowSplashScreenAnimatedIcon to replace an icon in the center of the starting window.

   For apps targeting Android 12 (API level 32) only:

   If the object is animatable and drawable through AnimationDrawable and AnimatedVectorDrawable, you also need to set windowSplashScreenAnimationDuration to play the animation while showing the starting window. (This isn't required for Android 13 because the duration is directly inferred from the AnimatedVectorDrawable).

   <item name="android:windowSplashScreenAnimatedIcon">@drawable/...</item>
   

3. Use windowSplashScreenAnimationDuration to indicate the duration of the splash screen icon animation. Setting this won't have any effect on the actual time during which the splash screen is shown, but you can retrieve it when customizing the splash screen exit animation using SplashScreenView#getIconAnimationDuration. See Keep the splash screen for longer periods in the following section for further details.

   <item name="android:windowSplashScreenAnimationDuration">1000</item>
   

4. Use windowSplashScreenIconBackgroundColor to set a background behind the splash screen icon. This is useful if there isn’t enough contrast between the window background and the icon.

   <item name="android:windowSplashScreenIconBackgroundColor">@color/...</item>
   

5. Optionally, you can use windowSplashScreenBrandingImage to set an image to be shown at the bottom of the splash screen. The design guidelines recommend against using a branding image.

   <item name="android:windowSplashScreenBrandingImage">@drawable/...</item>
   

6. Optionally, you can use windowSplashScreenBehavior to specify whether your app always displays the icon on the splash screen in Android 13 and higher. The default value is 0, where either the icon is displayed on the splash screen (if the launching activity sets the splashScreenStyle to SPLASH_SCREEN_STYLE_ICON) or follows the system behavior (if the launching activity does not specify any style). If you'd prefer to never display an empty splash screen and always want the animated icon to be displayed, set this value icon_preferred.

   <item name="android:windowSplashScreenBehavior">icon_preferred</item>
   

Keep the splash screen on-screen for longer periods

The splash screen is dismissed as soon as your app draws its first frame. If you need to load a small amount of data such as in-app settings from a local disk asynchronously, you can use ViewTreeObserver.OnPreDrawListener to suspend the app to draw its first frame.

If your starting activity finishes before drawing (for example, by not setting the content view and finishing before onResume), the pre-draw listener is not needed.

// Create a new event for the activity.
override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
    // Set the layout for the content view.
    setContentView(R.layout.main_activity)

    // Set up an OnPreDrawListener to the root view.
    val content: View = findViewById(android.R.id.content)
    content.viewTreeObserver.addOnPreDrawListener(
        object : ViewTreeObserver.OnPreDrawListener {
            override fun onPreDraw(): Boolean {
                // Check if the initial data is ready.
                return if (viewModel.isReady) {
                    // The content is ready; start drawing.
                    content.viewTreeObserver.removeOnPreDrawListener(this)
                    true
                } else {
                    // The content is not ready; suspend.
                    false
                }
            }
        }
    )
}

// Create a new event for the activity.
@Override
protected void onCreate(@Nullable Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    // Set the layout for the content view.
    setContentView(R.layout.main_activity);

    // Set up an OnPreDrawListener to the root view.
    final View content = findViewById(android.R.id.content);
    content.getViewTreeObserver().addOnPreDrawListener(
            new ViewTreeObserver.OnPreDrawListener() {
                @Override
                public boolean onPreDraw() {
                    // Check if the initial data is ready.
                    if (mViewModel.isReady()) {
                        // The content is ready; start drawing.
                        content.getViewTreeObserver().removeOnPreDrawListener(this);
                        return true;
                    } else {
                        // The content is not ready; suspend.
                        return false;
                    }
                }
            });
}

Customize the animation for dismissing the splash screen

You can further customize the animation of the splash screen through Activity.getSplashScreen().

override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
    // ...

    // Add a callback that's called when the splash screen is animating to
    // the app content.
    splashScreen.setOnExitAnimationListener { splashScreenView ->
        // Create your custom animation.
        val slideUp = ObjectAnimator.ofFloat(
            splashScreenView,
            View.TRANSLATION_Y,
            0f,
            -splashScreenView.height.toFloat()
        )
        slideUp.interpolator = AnticipateInterpolator()
        slideUp.duration = 200L

        // Call SplashScreenView.remove at the end of your custom animation.
        slideUp.doOnEnd { splashScreenView.remove() }

        // Run your animation.
        slideUp.start()
    }
}

@Override
protected void onCreate(@Nullable Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    // ...

    // Add a callback that's called when the splash screen is animating to
    // the app content.
    getSplashScreen().setOnExitAnimationListener(splashScreenView -> {
        final ObjectAnimator slideUp = ObjectAnimator.ofFloat(
                splashScreenView,
                View.TRANSLATION_Y,
                0f,
                -splashScreenView.getHeight()
        );
        slideUp.setInterpolator(new AnticipateInterpolator());
        slideUp.setDuration(200L);

        // Call SplashScreenView.remove at the end of your custom animation.
        slideUp.addListener(new AnimatorListenerAdapter() {
            @Override
            public void onAnimationEnd(Animator animation) {
                splashScreenView.remove();
            }
        });

        // Run your animation.
        slideUp.start();
    });
}

By the start of this callback, the animated vector drawable on the splash screen has begun. Depending on the duration of the app launch, the drawable might be in the middle of its animation. Use SplashScreenView.getIconAnimationStart to know when the animation started. You can calculate the remaining duration of the icon animation as follows:

// Get the duration of the animated vector drawable.
val animationDuration = splashScreenView.iconAnimationDuration
// Get the start time of the animation.
val animationStart = splashScreenView.iconAnimationStart
// Calculate the remaining duration of the animation.
val remainingDuration = if (animationDuration != null && animationStart != null) {
    (animationDuration - Duration.between(animationStart, Instant.now()))
        .toMillis()
        .coerceAtLeast(0L)
} else {
    0L
}

// Get the duration of the animated vector drawable.
Duration animationDuration = splashScreenView.getIconAnimationDuration();
// Get the start time of the animation.
Instant animationStart = splashScreenView.getIconAnimationStart();
// Calculate the remaining duration of the animation.
long remainingDuration;
if (animationDuration != null && animationStart != null) {
    remainingDuration = animationDuration.minus(
            Duration.between(animationStart, Instant.now())
    ).toMillis();
    remainingDuration = Math.max(remainingDuration, 0L);
} else {
    remainingDuration = 0L;
}