This version of the documentation is outdated! Click here for the latest released version.

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 10 requires an icon element in config.xml:

    <icon src="blackberry10/icon-86.png" />

See BlackBerry's documentation for targeting multiple sizes and locales.

[http://developer.blackberry.com/html5/documentation/icon_element.html]

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

Windows Phone specifies a single splash screen image:

    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

When creating a new Android project, the default splash screen images provided in the Cordova sample app should already be present in the platforms/android/res/drawable* directories. Feel free to replace these with your own images. When providing your own splash screen images, you do not need to provide the same permutation of 8 as the Cordova default ones here. More or less optimization can be used. The drawable directory names must follow the Android conventions for supporting screen sizes and alternate resources.

In the top-level config.xml file (not the one in platforms), add the following preferences:

<preference name="SplashScreen" value="screen" />
<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, minus the .png extension. The default value for SplashScreen is screen (for the file platforms/android/res/drawable*/screen.png), so if you name the image anything other than screen.png in the drawable* directories, you need to add/modify this line.

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

Finally, as a best practice, 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 as soon as it is ready. Because the app start time will vary quite a bit due to a number of factors such as CPU speed and network, 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, which is likely longer than necessary. 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

Add a rim:splash element to config.xml for each resolution and locale you wish to support:

http://developer.blackberry.com/html5/documentation/rim_splash_element.html