CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iphoneioscocoa-touchuser-interfaceuser-experience
Ben Packard
Ben Packard

Reputation: 26476

What to use for default.png when switching to app

I know that an iOS app's default.png image is not really intended for a branded launch image, and instead:

The purpose of this image is to give the user immediate feedback that the app launched. It also gives your app time to initialize itself and prepare its initial set of views for display.

When launching an app this is all well and good - you typically know the starting state of the UI so can provide a content-less version to simulate a fast launch.

But when responding to a custom url scheme, it is impossible to know what state the UI is in. I am aware that I can provide a custom image for the transition, but what should I use since I can't really represent the UI? Should I just use a black screen? Some branded image specific to the operation?

Interested to know if there are any guidelines for this, or failing that, suggestions for best practice.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 106

Answers (3)

Nate
Nate

Reputation: 31045

Apple wants you to try not to use splash images, but it's not an unbreakable rule.

For example, check out the Weather.com app. I'm sure there's many more.

What they want you to avoid is delaying the startup of your app, or letting the user believe that you're delaying the startup of your app, to show them branding. They would prefer that you try to fool the user into thinking that the app starts almost instantaneously. Default.png images are really a trick on their part to make it look like iOS can start apps instantly.

But, they do acknowledge that with apps that have significantly different tabs, or screens, or views, it's not always possible to make it look like the app immediately goes to your UI. Since they impose the constraint that you can only have one Default.png (for each screen size / orientation / device / url scheme), they understand that you can't dynamically set the Default.png depending on what the app is about to do first.

If your URL scheme itself doesn't uniquely identify what's about to show in your app, then my advice to you would be:

  1. if all your UIs in the app look similar, try to build a Default.png that looks like the common parts of those UIs. This would be sort of an empty view (but not blank). Maybe it would contain a tab bar or toolbar, and a background, that are at least shaded in your app's color scheme.

  2. if your app has many UIs that look different, and it can start in any one of them, then I actually would make your Default.png something like a branded splash image.

I don't recommend using a simple black image, and I doubt they'd prefer that either.

Upvotes: 0

Ashutosh
Ashutosh

Reputation: 2225

You can also use any image and name it as Default.png and do it just after deleting the already existing black image.

Upvotes: 0

Stephen
Stephen

Reputation: 1437

It would be best to just use a black screen as the Default.png can only be set once and not be specific to the operation

Upvotes: 1

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