Eclipse Neon - Disable Welcome Screen

Question

How can I disable the welcome screen in Eclipse Neon?

Although there is a similar question for Eclipse Juno, the methods suggested don't seem to work in Eclipse Neon.

One problem I detected is that I have the checkbox: always show Welcome at start up checked. If I uncheck it and restart Eclipse Neon, it remains checked again.

The same behaviour happens when I go to Help->Welcome, it seems that the checkbox is not working.

The main reason for me to disable the welcome screen is to see if I can solve a problem with Ctrol-Arrows that don't work when the the Welcome screen is shown as described in this question. So I would also appreciate if there is another solution to that problem.

I also tried to remove the line -showsplash in Eclipse.ini file but it doesn't seem to work either.

I noticed that the problem happens when I use Windows 7 only. I tried it using Windows 10 and it seems to work. So maybe, the problem is related to Windows 7.

Answer 1

After you uncheck the "Always show Welcome as start up" checkbox, you need to close the "Welcome" view (clicking the X in its tab). Only then can you close or restart Eclipse, which will now no longer show the "Welcome" view at startup.

Answer 2

I also tried to remove the line -showsplash in Eclipse.ini file but it doesn't seem to work either.

-showsplash is a red herring; it controls which splash screen (by default: the Eclipse Neon logo) is shown. Deleting this line and the next (org.eclipse.platform) won’t disable the splash screen. However, adding -noSplash to your eclipse.ini (or via the Eclipse command line) will. See the Eclipse Platform help for more information.

At any rate, neither option controls the “Welcome” view you want to disable. Hence “red herring.”