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Add a splash screen to a .NET MAUI app project

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On Android and iOS, .NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI) apps can display a splash screen while their initialization process completes. The splash screen is displayed immediately when an app is launched, providing immediate feedback to users while app resources are initialized:

.NET MAUI splash screens screenshot.

Once the app is ready for interaction, its splash screen is dismissed.

Note

On Android 12+ (API 31+), the splash screen shows an icon that's centred on screen. For more information about splash screens on Android 12+, see Splash screens on developer.android.com.

In a .NET MAUI app project, a splash screen can be specified in a single location in your app project, and at build time it can be automatically resized to the correct resolution for the target platform and device, and added to your app package. This avoids having to manually duplicate and name the splash screen on a per platform basis. By default, bitmap (non-vector) image formats are not automatically resized by .NET MAUI.

A .NET MAUI splash screen can use any of the standard platform image formats, including Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) files.

Important

.NET MAUI converts SVG files to PNG files. Therefore, when adding an SVG file to your .NET MAUI app project, it should be referenced from XAML or C# with a .png extension. The only reference to the SVG file should be in your project file.

A splash screen can be added to your app project by dragging an image into the Resources\Splash folder of the project, where its build action will automatically be set to MauiSplashScreen. This creates a corresponding entry in your project file:

<ItemGroup>
  <MauiSplashScreen Include="Resources\Splash\splashscreen.svg" />
</ItemGroup>

Note

A splash screen can also be added to other folders of your app project. However, in this scenario its build action must be manually set to MauiSplashScreen in the Properties window.

To comply with Android resource naming rules, splash screen files names must be lowercase, start and end with a letter character, and contain only alphanumeric characters or underscores. For more information, see App resources overview on developer.android.com.

The base size of the splash screen can be specified by setting the BaseSize attribute to values that are divisible by 8:

<MauiSplashScreen Include="Resources\Splash\splashscreen.svg" BaseSize="128,128" />

The value of the BaseSize attribute represents the baseline density of the splash screen, and is effectively the 1.0 scale factor for the splash screen from which all other density sizes are derived. This value will be used to ensure that splash screens are correctly resized to different display densities. If you don't specify a BaseSize for a bitmap-based splash screen, the image isn't resized. If you don't specify a BaseSize value for a vector-based splash screen, the dimensions specified in the SVG are assumed to be the base size. To stop vector images being resized, set the Resize attribute to false:

<MauiSplashScreen Include="Resources\Splash\splashscreen.svg" Resize="false" />

To add a tint to your splash screen, which is useful when you have a simple image you'd like to render in a different color to the source, set the TintColor attribute:

<MauiSplashScreen Include="Resources\Splash\splashscreen.svg" TintColor="#66B3FF" />

A background color for your splash screen can also be specified:

<MauiSplashScreen Include="Resources\Splash\splashscreen.svg" Color="#512BD4" />

Color values can be specified in hexadecimal, or as a .NET MAUI color. For example, Color="Red" is valid.

At build time, the splash screen can be resized to the correct resolution for the target platform and device. The resulting splash screen is then added to your app package.

On Android, the splash screen is added to your app package as Resources/values/maui_colors.xml and Resources/drawable/maui_splash_image.xml. .NET MAUI apps use the Maui.SplashTheme by default, which ensures that a splash screen will be displayed if present. Therefore, you should not specify a different theme in your manifest file or in your MainActivity class:

using Android.App;
using Android.Content.PM;

namespace MyMauiApp
{
      [Activity(Theme = "@style/Maui.SplashTheme", MainLauncher = true, ConfigurationChanges = ConfigChanges.ScreenSize | ConfigChanges.Orientation | ConfigChanges.UiMode | ConfigChanges.ScreenLayout | ConfigChanges.SmallestScreenSize)]
      public class MainActivity : MauiAppCompatActivity
      {
      }
}

For more advanced splash screen scenarios, per-platform approaches apply.