Android Splash Screen

This Android tutorial will help to learn how to show splash screen in an Android application. Splash screen is generally used when there is a need to do some background process when an application is initiated. Background process like loading the database, images, making a call over network. These kind of activities will consume time and a splash screen can be shown during that time. A splash screen can be the app icon, company logo and nice welcome image etcetera. Sometimes, splash screens are shown even when there is no need for a background process. This is just to showcase the brand through logo or some image and in this kind of promotional situations it is done based on fixed time interval.

In this tutorial, let us see how a splash screen can be shown in an Android application. Let us see a generic code which can be used for both the cases, to show a splash screen during a background process or to show a splash screen for a fixed time interval.

• Lets have two Android Activity SplashScreenActivity and AppMainActivity. One for a splash screen and another for application main activity.
• Splash screen activity will be the Android app’s launcher activity.
• Splash screen will have an image background repeat tiled and a logo image shown in ImageView.
• Lets have an AsyncTask which will run as a async process. Any network calls, database loading can be done inside this. For this example sake, I have give a fixed time interval sleep.
• Once the fixed time interval is done or the background process is complete, this SplashScreenAcvitity will be closed and the AppMainActivity will be shown.

SplashScreenActivity.java

package com.javapapers.android.androidsplashscreen;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.content.Intent;
import android.os.AsyncTask;
import android.os.Bundle;

public class SplashScreenActivity extends Activity {

	private static final int SPLASH_SHOW_TIME = 5000;

	@Override
	protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
		super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
		setContentView(R.layout.activity_splash_screen);

		new BackgroundSplashTask().execute();

	}

	/**
	 * Async Task: can be used to load DB, images during which the splash screen
	 * is shown to user
	 */
	private class BackgroundSplashTask extends AsyncTask {

		@Override
		protected void onPreExecute() {
			super.onPreExecute();
		}

		@Override
		protected Void doInBackground(Void... arg0) {

			// I have just given a sleep for this thread
			// if you want to load database, make
			// network calls, load images
			// you can do them here and remove the following
			// sleep

			// do not worry about this Thread.sleep
			// this is an async task, it will not disrupt the UI
			try {
				Thread.sleep(SPLASH_SHOW_TIME);
			} catch (InterruptedException e) {
				e.printStackTrace();
			}

			return null;
		}

		@Override
		protected void onPostExecute(Void result) {
			super.onPostExecute(result);
			Intent i = new Intent(SplashScreenActivity.this,
					AppMainActivity.class);
			// any info loaded can during splash_show
			// can be passed to main activity using
			// below
			i.putExtra("loaded_info", " ");
			startActivity(i);
			finish();
		}

	}
}

activity_splash_screen.xml

<!-- @drawable/backrepeat - refers to the image - check backrepeat.xml -->
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
    android:background="@drawable/backrepeat" >

    <ImageView
        android:id="@+id/imgLogo"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_centerInParent="true"
        android:src="@drawable/javapapers"
        android:tileMode="repeat" />

    <TextView
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"
        android:layout_marginBottom="10dp"
        android:gravity="center_horizontal"
        android:text="javapapers.com"
        android:textColor="#454545"
        android:textSize="12sp" />

</RelativeLayout>

backrepeat.xml

This is just to show how to tile (repeat) an image background in an Android activity

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<bitmap xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:src="@drawable/background" 
    android:tileMode="repeat" />

AndroidManifest.xml

This Android Manifest file is just to show that the launcher activity is the splash screen.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    package="com.javapapers.android.androidsplashscreen"
    android:versionCode="1"
    android:versionName="1.0" >

    <uses-sdk
        android:minSdkVersion="8"
        android:targetSdkVersion="18" />

    <application
        android:allowBackup="true"
        android:icon="@drawable/ic_launcher"
        android:label="@string/app_name"
        android:theme="@style/AppTheme" >
        <activity
            android:name="com.javapapers.android.androidsplashscreen.SplashScreenActivity"
            android:label="@string/app_name" >
            <intent-filter>
                <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
                <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
            </intent-filter>
        </activity>
        
         <activity
            android:name="com.javapapers.android.androidsplashscreen.AppMainActivity"
            android:label="@string/app_name" >
        </activity>
    </application>

</manifest>

AppMainActivity.java

package com.javapapers.android.androidsplashscreen;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.view.Menu;

/*
 * A placeholder main activity for this Android App
 * After splash screen is displayed this main acitivity
 * will be shown.
 */
public class AppMainActivity extends Activity {

	@Override
	protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
		super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
		setContentView(R.layout.activity_app_main);
	}

	@Override
	public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
		getMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.app_main, menu);
		return true;
	}

}

activity_app_main.xml

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    android:paddingBottom="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin"
    android:paddingLeft="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
    android:paddingRight="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
    android:paddingTop="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin"
    tools:context=".AppMainActivity" >

    <TextView
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_alignParentTop="true"
        android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
        android:layout_marginTop="182dp"
        android:text="@string/hello_world"
        android:textSize="30dp" />

</RelativeLayout>

Download Android App Project Source for Splash Screen