iOS Splashscreens

Oct 1, 2014 - Updated Dec 12, 2014

Note: This was originally written before Cordova had in-built support for the new screen sizes introduced with the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. Now with iOS Cordova 3.7.0+, all you need to do is navigate to YOURAPP/platforms/ios/YOURAPP/Resources/splash and replace all the default Cordova splashscreens with your own ones. Cordova automatically sorts out the iPad status bar so that it's not essential to have splashscreens both WITH and WITHOUT the status bar, so the default 10 splashscreens should be all you'll need. Nevertheless, you may hopefully still find some information on this page useful.

Splashscreens, launch screens, whatever you want to call them, are a time consuming and fiddly part of app development on iOS.

Apple says not to use them as a chance to display pretty pictures to your app users, but like many app developers, I choose to ignore that - if I'm spending ages preparing splashscreens for my apps they are going to look good. Even if they're only seen for a few seconds.

To cover all the bases, as of the release of the iPhone 6 & iPhone 6 Plus in September 2014, there are no less than 14! splashscreens you need for a Universal iOS app.

Below are details of all of them.

I've also prepared a handy bunch of ready-made PNG files with all the dimensions printed on them, along with what devices they are applicable to. You can download them as a ZIP file here.

Apple has introduced the ability to create Launch Screens in Interface Builder (now part of Xcode), enabling you to use a single Launch Screen and set bounds for resizing it to fit all the different models of iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. But it's early days for this feature and if you want to continue to support operating systems prior to iOS 8 (please do), you'll need to use good, old-fashioned PNG splashscreens for the time being.

It's possible to use a combination of a Launch Screen .xib for iOS 8 devices and traditional PNG launch screens for older iOS devices, but I can't really see much point in this yet. If you're unfamiliar with Interface Builder (which is probably why you're using Cordova/Phonegap), stick with PNG launch screens, even for iOS 8 devices including the iPhone 6 & iPhone 6 Plus. It's a pain to create all these different-sized splashscreens in an image editing application like Photoshop, but to my mind, it's much less painful than trying to make a resolution independent Launch Screen in Xcode.

The Ringmaster
ringmaster@cordovacircus.com

Note: In the tables below, devices shown in RED are no longer supported by Cordova. (Cordova 3.5 dropped support for iOS 5 and these devices can't be updated to iOS 6 or later.)

iPhone Portrait Splashscreens

iPhone Landscape Splashscreens

All earlier iPhones do not support landscape splashscreens.

iPad Portrait Splashscreens

iPad Landscape Splashscreens

iPhone/iPod touch Compatibility Table

Note: The iPhone 6 Plus requires a splashscreen with a resolution of 1242 x 2208, but it actually only has a screen resolution of 1080 x 1920.

iPad Compatibility Table

If using the sample splashscreens from the ZIP file above, your Xcode Launch Screen setup should look something like this ↓