Android - Prevent white screen at startup

Question

As we all know, many Android apps display a white screen very briefly before their first Activity comes into focus. This problem is observed in the following cases:

• Android apps that extend the global Application class and perform major initializations therein. The Application object is always created before the first Activity (a fact that can be observed in the debugger), so this makes sense. This is the cause of the delay in my case.

• Android apps that display the default preview window before the splash screen.

Setting android:windowDisablePreview = "true" obviously does not work here. Nor can I set the parent theme of the splash screen to Theme.Holo.NoActionBar as described here, because [unfortunately] my splash screen makes use of an ActionBar.

Meanwhile, apps that do not extend the Application class do not show the white screen at startup.

The thing is, ideally the initializations performed in the Application object need to occur before the first Activity is shown. So my question is, how can I perform these initializations on app startup without using an Application object? Possibly using a Thread or Service, I suppose?

This is an interesting problem to think about. I can't bypass it the usual way (by setting the NoActionBar theme), as tragically my Splash screen actually has an ActionBar due to some unrelated reasons.

Note:

I have already referred to the following questions:

• How To fix white screen on app Start up?

• Android splash screen is white in the beginning?

• White screen before splashscreen

• White background when Android app start up

• Why there is a white screen appears for 1sec when starting to run the apps in Android?

References:

• Patterns – Launch screens.

• Branded launch screen: the new splash for Android.

• Splash Screens the Right Way.

Answer 1

Both properties works

    <style name="AppBaseThemeDark" parent="@style/Theme.AppCompat">
            <!--your other properties -->
            <!--<item name="android:windowDisablePreview">true</item>-->
            <item name="android:windowBackground">@null</item>
            <!--your other properties -->
    </style>

Answer 2

Within the lifecycle callback methods, you can declare how your activity behaves when the user leaves and re-enters the activity. Remember that the way Android is designed, there is a lifecycle for each and every app. If you put too much load to the onCreate() method (which is the method used to load the layout files and initalise any controls you have in it), then the white screen will become more visible, as the layout file will take longer to load.

I suggest using several different methods when starting an activity. Such are the onStart() (being called as the first thing once the app is loaded), onActivityCreated() (being called after the layout is displayed and useful if you are making any data processing upon starting the activity).

To make it easier for you, below is the official activity lifecycle diagram:

Answer 3

please add this line into your app theme

<item name="android:windowDisablePreview">true</item>

Answer 4

The problem with white background is caused because of android's cold start while the app loads to memory, and it can be avoided with this:

public class OnboardingWithCenterAnimationActivity extends AppCompatActivity {
public static final int STARTUP_DELAY = 300;
public static final int ANIM_ITEM_DURATION = 1000;
public static final int ITEM_DELAY = 300;

private boolean animationStarted = false;

@Override
protected void onCreate(@Nullable Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    setTheme(R.style.AppTheme);
    getWindow().getDecorView().setSystemUiVisibility(
            View.SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_LAYOUT_FULLSCREEN | View.SYSTEM_UI_FLAG_LAYOUT_HIDE_NAVIGATION);
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.activity_onboarding_center);
}

@Override
public void onWindowFocusChanged(boolean hasFocus) {

    if (!hasFocus || animationStarted) {
        return;
    }

    animate();

    super.onWindowFocusChanged(hasFocus);
}

private void animate() {
    ImageView logoImageView = (ImageView) findViewById(R.id.img_logo);
    ViewGroup container = (ViewGroup) findViewById(R.id.container);

    ViewCompat.animate(logoImageView)
        .translationY(-250)
        .setStartDelay(STARTUP_DELAY)
        .setDuration(ANIM_ITEM_DURATION).setInterpolator(
            new DecelerateInterpolator(1.2f)).start();

    for (int i = 0; i < container.getChildCount(); i++) {
        View v = container.getChildAt(i);
        ViewPropertyAnimatorCompat viewAnimator;

        if (!(v instanceof Button)) {
            viewAnimator = ViewCompat.animate(v)
                    .translationY(50).alpha(1)
                    .setStartDelay((ITEM_DELAY * i) + 500)
                    .setDuration(1000);
        } else {
            viewAnimator = ViewCompat.animate(v)
                    .scaleY(1).scaleX(1)
                    .setStartDelay((ITEM_DELAY * i) + 500)
                    .setDuration(500);
        }

        viewAnimator.setInterpolator(new DecelerateInterpolator()).start();
    }
}
}

layout

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<FrameLayout
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:background="?colorPrimary"
android:orientation="vertical"
>

<LinearLayout
    android:id="@+id/container"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:layout_gravity="center"
    android:gravity="center"
    android:orientation="vertical"
    android:paddingTop="144dp"
    tools:ignore="HardcodedText"
    >

    <TextView
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal"
        android:layout_marginTop="16dp"
        android:alpha="0"
        android:text="Hello world"         android:textAppearance="@style/TextAppearance.AppCompat.Widget.ActionBar.Title.Inverse"
        android:textColor="@android:color/white"
        android:textSize="22sp"
        tools:alpha="1"
        />

    <TextView
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal"
        android:layout_marginTop="8dp"
        android:alpha="0"
        android:gravity="center"
        android:text="This a nice text"
      android:textAppearance="@style/TextAppearance.AppCompat.Widget.ActionBar.Subtitle.Inverse"
        android:textSize="20sp"
        tools:alpha="1"
        />

    <Button
        android:id="@+id/btn_choice1"
        android:layout_width="200dp"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_marginTop="48dp"
        android:scaleX="0"
        android:scaleY="0"
        android:text="A nice choice"
        android:theme="@style/Button"
        />

    <Button
        android:id="@+id/btn_choice2"
        android:layout_width="200dp"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_marginTop="4dp"
        android:scaleX="0"
        android:scaleY="0"
        android:text="Far better!"
        android:theme="@style/Button"
        />

</LinearLayout>

<ImageView
    android:id="@+id/img_logo"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:layout_gravity="center"
    android:src="@drawable/img_face"
    tools:visibility="gone"
    />
</FrameLayout>

img face

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<layer-list xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
        android:opacity="opaque">

<item android:drawable="?colorPrimary"/>
<item>
    <bitmap
        android:gravity="center"
        android:src="@drawable/img_face"/>
</item>

Add this theme to your splashscreen in the manifest

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
<style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.NoActionBar">
    <!-- Customize your theme here. -->
    <item name="colorPrimary">@color/colorPrimary</item>
    <item name="colorPrimaryDark">@color/colorPrimaryDark</item>
    <item name="colorAccent">@color/colorAccent</item>
    <item name="android:windowBackground">@null</item>
</style>

<style name="AppTheme.CenterAnimation">
    <item name="android:windowBackground">@drawable/ll_face_logo</item>
</style>

which will produce efect like this

for more details and more solutions you can check this BlogPost

Answer 5

As you are already aware why this white screen is there, as due to background processes or application initialization or large files, so just check below idea for overcome from this.

To prevent this white screen on beginning of the app, one way is splash screen, this is just a way not final and you must have to use.

When you will show splash screen from your splash.xml file, then also this issue will be remain same,

So you have to create ont style in style.xml file for splash screen and there you have to set window background as your splash image and then apply that theme to your splash activity from manifest file. So now when you will run app, first it will set theme and by this way user will be able to see directly splash image instead of white screen.

Answer 6

First of all, to remove the white screen read this - https://www.bignerdranch.com/blog/splash-screens-the-right-way/

But more importantly, optimize your initial load and defer any heavy work to when you have time to run it. Post your application class here if you want us to take a look at it.