expo-splash-screen

What is expo-splash-screen?

The expo-splash-screen package is used to control and customize the splash screen for Expo and React Native apps. It allows developers to show a splash screen while the app is loading, hide it once the app is ready, and customize its appearance.

What are expo-splash-screen's main functionalities?

Preventing Auto-Hide

This feature allows you to prevent the splash screen from auto-hiding. This is useful if you need to perform some asynchronous operations before the splash screen is hidden.

import * as SplashScreen from 'expo-splash-screen';

SplashScreen.preventAutoHideAsync();

Hiding the Splash Screen

This feature allows you to manually hide the splash screen once your app is ready. This is typically done after your app has finished loading all necessary resources.

import * as SplashScreen from 'expo-splash-screen';

async function hideSplashScreen() {
  await SplashScreen.hideAsync();
}

Showing the Splash Screen

This feature allows you to manually show the splash screen. This can be useful if you need to display the splash screen again after it has been hidden.

import * as SplashScreen from 'expo-splash-screen';

async function showSplashScreen() {
  await SplashScreen.showAsync();
}

Other packages similar to expo-splash-screen

react-native-splash-screen

The react-native-splash-screen package provides similar functionality to expo-splash-screen, allowing you to control the splash screen in a React Native app. It offers methods to show and hide the splash screen, but it requires more manual setup compared to expo-splash-screen.

react-native-bootsplash

The react-native-bootsplash package is another alternative for managing splash screens in React Native apps. It provides a more customizable and flexible approach compared to expo-splash-screen, with support for different splash screen images for different devices and orientations.

README

expo-splash-screen

expo-splash-screen allows you to customize your app's splash screen, which is the initial screen users see when the app is launched, before it has loaded. Splash screens (sometimes called launch screens) provide a user's first experience with your application.

Content

• 📜 CHANGELOG
• 🚀 Features
• 📚 API
• 🗒 Examples
• 💻 Installation in managed Expo projects
• 🖥 Installation in bare React Native projects
  • 📱 Configure iOS
  • 🤖 Configure Android
• 👏 Contributing
• ❓ Known issues
• 🏅 Hall of fame

🚀 Features

Built-in splash screen image resize modes

expo-splash-screen contains a built-in feature for taking care of properly displaying your splash screen image. You can use the following resize modes to obtain behavior as if you were using the React Native <Image> component's resizeMode style.

CONTAIN resize mode

Scale the image uniformly (maintaining the image's aspect ratio) so that both dimensions the width and height of the image will be equal to or less than the corresponding dimension of the device's screen.

Android	iOS

COVER resize mode

Scale the image uniformly (maintaining the image's aspect ratio) so that both the width and height of the image will be equal to or larger than the corresponding dimension of the device's screen.

Android	iOS

NATIVE resize mode

Android only.

By using this resize mode your app will will leverage Android's ability to present a static bitmap while the application is starting up. Android (unlike iOS) does not support stretching of the provided image during launch, so the application will present the given image centered on the screen at its original dimensions.

Android

Animation above presents one of our known issues

Selecting this resize mode requires some more work to be done in native configuration. Please take a look at the res/drawable/splashscreen.xml and res/drawable/splashscreen_background.png sections.

📚 API

import * as SplashScreen from 'expo-splash-screen';

The native splash screen that is controlled via this module autohides once the ReactNative-controlled view hierarchy is mounted. This means that when your app first renders view component, the native splash screen will hide. This default behavior can be prevented by calling SplashScreen.preventAutoHideAsync() and later on SplashScreen.hideAsync().

SplashScreen.preventAutoHideAsync()

This method makes the native splash screen stay visible until SplashScreen.hideAsync() is called. This must be called before any ReactNative-controlled view hierarchy is rendered (either in the global scope of your main component, or when the component renders null at the beginning - see Examples section).

Preventing default autohiding might come in handy if your application needs to prepare/download some resources and/or make some API calls before first rendering some actual view hierarchy.

Returns

A Promise that resolves to true when preventing autohiding succeeded and to false if the native splash screen is already prevented from autohiding (for instance, if you've already called this method). Promise rejection most likely means that native splash screen cannot be prevented from autohiding (it's already hidden when this method was executed).

SplashScreen.hideAsync()

Hides the native splash screen. Only works if the native splash screen has been previously prevented from autohiding by calling SplashScreen.preventAutoHideAsync() method.

Returns

A Promise that resolves to true once the splash screen becomes hidden and to false if the splash screen is already hidden.

🗒 Examples

SplashScreen.preventAutoHideAsync() in global scope

App.tsx

import React from 'react';
import * as SplashScreen from 'expo-splash-screen';

// Prevent native splash screen from autohiding before App component declaration
SplashScreen.preventAutoHideAsync()
  .then(result => console.log(`SplashScreen.preventAutoHideAsync() succeeded: ${result}`))
  .catch(console.warn); // it's good to explicitly catch and inspect any error 

export default class App extends React.Component {
  componentDidMount() {
    // Hides native splash screen after 2s
    setTimeout(async () => {
      await SplashScreen.hideAsync();
    }, 2000);
  }

  render() {
    return (
      <View style={styles.container}>
        <Text style={styles.text}>SplashScreen Demo! 👋</Text>
      </View>
    )
  } 
}

const styles = StyleSheet.create({
  container: {
    flex: 1,
    alignItems: 'center',
    justifyContent: 'center',
    backgroundColor: '#aabbcc',
  },
  text: {
    color: 'white',
    fontWeight: 'bold',
  },
};

SplashScreen.preventAutoHideAsync() in component that initially renders null

App.tsx

import React from 'react';
import * as SplashScreen from 'expo-splash-screen';

export default class App extends React.Component {
  state = {
    appIsReady: false,
  };

  async componentDidMount() {
    // Prevent native splash screen from autohiding
    try {
      await SplashScreen.preventAutoHideAsync();
    } catch (e) {
      console.warn(e);
    }
    this.prepareResources();
  }

  /**
   * Method that serves to load resources and make API calls
   */ 
  prepareResources = async () => {
    await performAPICalls(...);
    await downloadAssets(...);

    this.setState({ appIsReady: true }, async () => {
      await SplashScreen.hideAsync();
    });
  }

  render() {
    if (!this.state.appIsReady) {
      return null;
    }

    return (
      <View style={styles.container}>
        <Text style={styles.text}>SplashScreen Demo! 👋</Text>
      </View>
    )
  } 
}

const styles = StyleSheet.create({
  container: {
    flex: 1,
    alignItems: 'center',
    justifyContent: 'center',
    backgroundColor: '#aabbcc',
  },
  text: {
    color: 'white',
    fontWeight: 'bold',
  },
};

💻 Installation in managed Expo projects

Managed Expo projects are not supported by this unimodule at this moment. Instead, you should use the Expo.SplashScreen module that is within the expo package.

🖥 Installation in bare React Native projects

For bare React Native projects, you must ensure that you have installed and configured the react-native-unimodules package before continuing.

Add the package to your dependencies

expo install expo-splash-screen

📱 Configure iOS

Run pod install in the ios directory after installing the package.

To achieve native splash screen (in iOS ecosystem it's called LaunchScreen) behavior, you have to provide either a SplashScreen.storyboard file or a SplashScreen.xib file, and configure your Xcode project accordingly.

The guide below shows how to configure your Xcode project to use single image file as a splash screen using a .storyboard file (configuration for .xib filetype is analogous).

Images.xcassets

First you need to add the image file that would serve as a splash screen to your native project's resources.

1. In your Xcode project open the .xcassets (often named Images.xcassets or Assets.xcassets) file.
2. In the content panel add New image set and name it SplashScreen.
3. Provide the splash screen image you've prepared (you have to provide it in three different scales).

SplashScreen.storyboard

This is the actual splash screen definition and will be used by the system to render your splash screen.

1. Create a SplashScreen.storyboard file.
2. Add a View Controller to the newly created .storyboard file:
   • open Library (+ button on the top-right),
   • find View Controller element,
   • drag-and-drop it to the .storyboard file.

1. Add an Image View to the View Controller:
   • first remove other View element from View Controller,
   • open Library (+ button on the top-right),
   • find Image View element,
   • drag-and-drop it as a View Controller child in view hierarchy inspector.

1. Set Storyboard ID to SplashScreenViewController:
   • select View Controller in view hierarchy inspector,
   • navigate to Identity Inspector in the right panel,
   • and set Storyboard ID to SplashScreenViewController.

1. Configure Image View source:
   • select Image View in view hierarchy inspector,
   • navigate to Attributes Inspector in the right panel,
   • select SplashScreen in Image parameter).

1. Configure Background of the Image View:
   • select Image View in view hierarchy inspector,
   • navigate to Attributes Inspector in the right panel,
   • configure Background parameter:
     • To enter a #RRGGBB value you need to select Custom option and in the Colors Popup that appeared you need to navigate to the second tab and choose RGB Sliders from dropdown select.

ImageView's ContentMode

This is how your image will be displayed on the screen.

1. Open SplashScreen.storyboard and select Image View from View Controller.
2. Navigate to Attributes Inspector in the right panel and locate Content Mode.
3. Select one of the following:
   • Aspect Fit to obtain CONTAIN resize mode,
   • Aspect Fill to obtain COVER resize mode.
4. You can always choose other options to achieve different image positioning and scaling.

Launch Screen File

The newly created SplashScreen.storyboard needs to be marked as the Launch Screen File in your Xcode project in order to be presented from the very beginning of your application launch.

1. Select your project in Project Navigator
2. Select your project name from TARGETS panel and navigate to General tab.
3. Locate App Icons and Launch Images section and Launch Screen File option.
4. Select or enter SplashScreen as the value for located option.

🤖 Configure Android

To achieve fully-native splash screen behavior, expo-splash-screen needs to be hooked into the native view hierarchy and consume some resources that have to be placed under /android/app/src/res directory.

SplashScreen.show(Activity activity, SplashScreenImageResizeMode mode, Class rootViewClass)

This native method is used to hook SplashScreen into the native view hierarchy that is attached to the provided activity.

You can use this method to customize how the splash screen view will be presented. Pass one of SplashScreenImageResizeMode.{CONTAIN, COVER, NATIVE} as second argument to do so.

MainActivity.{java,kt}

Modify MainActivity.{java,kt} or any other activity that is marked in the application main AndroidManifest.xml as a main activity of your application (main activity is marked with the android.intent.action.MAIN intent filter. You can take a look at this example from official Android docs).

Ensure SplashScreen.show(...) method is called after super.onCreate(...) (if onCreate method is not overwritten yet, override it including SplashScreen.show(...)).

+ import expo.modules.splashscreen.SplashScreen;
+ import expo.modules.splashscreen.SplashScreenImageResizeMode;

public class MainActivity extends ReactActivity {

  // other methods

  @Override
  protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
+   // SplashScreen.show(...) has to be called after super.onCreate(...)
+   SplashScreen.show(this, SplashScreenImageResizeMode.CONTAIN, ReactRootView.class);
    ...
  }

  // other methods
}

res/drawable/splashscreen_background.png

You have to provide your splash screen image and place it under the res/drawable directory. This image will be loaded as soon as Android mounts your application's native view hierarchy.

NATIVE mode adjustments

If you've selected SplashScreenImageResizeMode.NATIVE mode in SplashScreen.show, you need to do a few additional steps.

In your application's res directory you might want to have a number of drawable-X sub-directories (where X is the different DPI for different devices). They store different versions of images that are picked based on the device's DPI (for more information please see this official Android docs).

To achieve proper scaling of your splash screen image on every device you should have following directories:

• res/drawable-mdpi - scale 1x - resources for medium-density (mdpi) screens (~160dpi). (This is the baseline density.)
• res/drawable-hdpi - scale 1.5x - resources for high-density (hdpi) screens (~240dpi).
• res/drawable-xhdpi - scale 2x - resources for extra-high-density (xhdpi) screens (~320dpi).
• res/drawable-xxhdpi - scale 3x - resources for extra-extra-high-density (xxhdpi) screens (~480dpi).
• res/drawable-xxxhdpi - scale 4x - resources for extra-extra-extra-high-density (xxxhdpi) uses (~640dpi).

Each of directories mentioned above should contain the same splashscreen_image.png file, but with a different resolution (pay attention to scale factors).

res/values/colors.xml

This file contains colors that are reused across your application at the native level. Update the file with the following content or create one if missing:

<resources>
+ <color name="splashscreen_background">#AABBCC</color> <!-- #AARRGGBB or #RRGGBB format -->
  <!-- Other colors defined for your application -->
</resources>

res/drawable/splashscreen.xml

This file contains the description of how the splash screen view should be drawn by the Android system. Create the file with the following content:

+ <layer-list xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
+   <item android:drawable="@color/splashscreen_background"/>
+ </layer-list>

NATIVE mode adjustments

If you've selected SplashScreenImageResizeMode.NATIVE mode in SplashScreen.show, you should add:

<layer-list xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
  <item android:drawable="@color/splashscreen_background"/>
+ <item>
+   <bitmap android:gravity="center" android:src="@drawable/splashscreen_image"/>
+ </item>
</layer-list>

res/values/styles.xml

Locate your main activity theme in /android/app/src/res/values/styles.xml or create one if missing.

  <!-- Main activity theme. -->
  <style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.NoActionBar">
+   <item name="android:windowBackground">@drawable/splashscreen</item> <!-- this line instructs the system to use 'splashscreen.xml' as a background of the whole application -->
    <!-- Other style properties -->
  </style>

AndroidManifest.xml

Adjust your application's main AndroidManifest.xml to contain an android:theme property pointing to the style that contains your splash screen configuration:

<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    package="com.example.myapp">

  ...

  <application ...>

+   <!-- Ensure that 'android:theme' property is pointing to the style containing native splash screen reference - see 'styles.xml' -->
    <activity
      android:name=".MainActivity"
+     android:theme="@style/AppTheme"
      ...
    >
      ...
    </activity>
  </application>

</manifest>

👏 Contributing

Contributions are very welcome! Please refer to guidelines described in the contributing guide.

❓ Known issues

iOS caching

Splash Screens on iOS apps can sometimes encounter a caching issue where the previous image will flash before showing the new, intended image. When this occurs, we recommend you try power cycling your device and uninstalling and re-installing the application. However, the caching sometimes can persist for a day or two so be patient if the aforementioned steps were unable to resolve the issue.

NATIVE mode pushes splash image up a little bit

See NATIVE mode preview above.

We are aware of this issue and unfortunately haven't been able to provide a solution as of yet. This is on our immediate roadmap...

🏅 Hall Of Fame

This module is based on a solid work from (many thanks for that 👏):

• react-native-splash-screen
• react-native-bootsplash
• react-native-make