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Icons and Splash Screens

This section shows how to configure an app's icon and optional splash screen for various platforms, both when working in the Cordova CLI (described in The Command-Line Interface) or using platform-specific SDK tools (detailed in the Platform Guides).

Configuring Icons in the CLI

When working in the CLI, icon source files are located within various platform-specific subdirectories within the project's www/res/icons directory. Newly created projects come with a default set of Cordova icons for you to replace for the platforms you wish to target.

Android specifies icons for low, medium, high, and extra-high resolutions:

    android/icon-36-ldpi.png
    android/icon-48-mdpi.png
    android/icon-72-hdpi.png
    android/icon-96-xhdpi.png

The iOS platform specifies 72-pixel-square icons for iPads, and 57-pixel icons for iPhones and iPods, with high-resolution 2x variants for retina displays:

    ios/icon-57-2x.png
    ios/icon-57.png
    ios/icon-72-2x.png
    ios/icon-72.png

Windows Phone specifies a default 48-pixel icon, along with various devices' background tiling images used when representing applications:

    windows-phone/icon-48.png
    windows-phone/icon-62-tile.png
    windows-phone/icon-173-tile.png

BlackBerry requires an 80-pixel icon:

    blackberry/icon-80.png

Tizen requires an 128-pixel icon:

    tizen/icon-128.png

Configuring Splash Screens in the CLI

Use the Splashscreen API to enable display of an app's introductory splash screen on many platforms. When working in the CLI, splash screen source files are located within the project's www/res/screens subdirectory.

Android specifies both portrait- and landscape-oriented splash screen images for low, medium, high, and extra-high resolutions:

    android/screen-hdpi-landscape.png
    android/screen-hdpi-portrait.png
    android/screen-ldpi-landscape.png
    android/screen-ldpi-portrait.png
    android/screen-mdpi-landscape.png
    android/screen-mdpi-portrait.png
    android/screen-xhdpi-landscape.png
    android/screen-xhdpi-portrait.png

The iOS platform specifies variants for iPhone/iPod and iPad, with variants for retina displays and different orientations. The 568h file applies to the iPhone 5's taller screen:

    ios/screen-ipad-landscape-2x.png
    ios/screen-ipad-landscape.png
    ios/screen-ipad-portrait-2x.png
    ios/screen-ipad-portrait.png
    ios/screen-iphone-landscape-2x.png
    ios/screen-iphone-landscape.png
    ios/screen-iphone-portrait-2x.png
    ios/screen-iphone-portrait.png
    ios/screen-iphone-portrait-568h-2x.png

BlackBerry and Windows Phone both specify a single splash screen image:

    blackberry/screen-225.png
    windows-phone/screen-portrait.jpg

The following sections detail how to set up splash screens when working with SDKs and related command-line tools described in Platform Guides.

Don't forget to install the SplashScreen plugin before trying to use the navigator.splashscreen.hide() or navigator.splashscreen.show() methods.

Splash Screens for the Android Platform

Place 9-patch image files in the Android project's platforms/android/res/drawable* directories.

The size for each should be:

xlarge (xhdpi): at least 960 × 720
large (hdpi): at least 640 × 480
medium (mdpi): at least 470 × 320
small (ldpi): at least 426 × 320

If you want to use the default splash screen images provided in Cordova, you'll need to copy the png files from platforms/android/www/res/screen/android to platforms/android/res/drawable*/:

cd platforms/android/res
mkdir drawable-port-ldpi
cp -p ../assets/www/res/screen/android/screen-ldpi-portrait.png drawable-port-ldpi/screen.png
mkdir drawable-land-ldpi
cp -p ../assets/www/res/screen/android/screen-ldpi-landscape.png drawable-land-ldpi/screen.png
mkdir drawable-port-mdpi
cp -p ../assets/www/res/screen/android/screen-mdpi-portrait.png drawable-port-mdpi/screen.png
mkdir drawable-land-mdpi
cp -p ../assets/www/res/screen/android/screen-mdpi-landscape.png drawable-land-mdpi/screen.png
mkdir drawable-port-hdpi
cp -p ../assets/www/res/screen/android/screen-hdpi-portrait.png drawable-port-hdpi/screen.png
mkdir drawable-land-hdpi
cp -p ../assets/www/res/screen/android/screen-hdpi-landscape.png drawable-land-hdpi/screen.png
mkdir drawable-port-xhdpi
cp -p ../assets/www/res/screen/android/screen-xhdpi-portrait.png drawable-port-xhdpi/screen.png
mkdir drawable-land-xhdpi
cp -p ../assets/www/res/screen/android/screen-xhdpi-landscape.png drawable-land-xhdpi/screen.png

The drawable directory names must follow the Android conventions for supporting screen sizes and alternate resources.

In config.xml in the project's www directory, add the following preferences:

<preference name="SplashScreen" value="splash" />
<preference name="SplashScreenDelay" value="10000" />

The first line sets the image to display as the splash screen. This is the file name of the png in the drawable* directories. If you name the image anything other than splash.png, you need to modify this line. Do not include the filename extension (i.e., .png). If you want to use the default splash screens provided in Cordova as listed above, use the value screen.

The second line sets the default delay of how long the splashscreen appears in milliseconds. This should be the maximum expected start time. The default value for SplashScreenDelay is 3000 ms.

Finally, the splash screen should be present only as long as necessary. When your app has started and the webview has loaded, your app should hide the splash screen so that your main view is visible. Because the app start time will vary quite a bit due to a number of factors, it is recommended that your app explicitly invoke navigator.splashscreen.hide() in the Javascript method that responds to the [deviceready](../cordova/events/events.deviceready.html) event. Otherwise the splash screen will be visible for the SplashScreenDelay value that you configured above. This event-driven approach is highly recommended versus having the splash screen visible for always a fixed duration.

Splash Screens for the iOS Platform

Copy splash screen images into the iOS project's Resources/splash directory. Only add those images for the devices you want to support, such as iPad or iPhone. The size of each image should be:

Default-568h@2x~iphone.png (640x1136 pixels)
Default-Landscape@2x~ipad.png (2048x1496 pixels)
Default-Landscape~ipad.png (1024x748 pixels)
Default-Portrait@2x~ipad.png (1536x2008 pixels)
Default-Portrait~ipad.png (768x1004 pixels)
Default@2x~iphone.png (640x960 pixels)
Default~iphone.png (320x480 pixels)

Splash Screens for the BlackBerry 10 Platform

Copy splash screen images into the project's res/screen/blackberry10 directory. The file names should be:

splash-1280x768.png (1280x768 pixels)
splash-720x720.png (720x720 pixels)
splash-768x1280.png (768x1280 pixels)