Black screen after iOS LaunchScreen/LaunchImage

Bugs
#1

With Defold 1.2.163 the launch screen/image was effective, there was no gap between the launch screen/image and the app content.

With Defold 1.2.164 there is a short period of time with black screen, which gets longer depending on the loading time of the app.
This results in a black flash when launching an app, which is not pleasant to the eye.

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#2

Hmm, apart from changing to using the UIApplicationMain, I don’t know what could have caused this.
Although launchimages are deprecated, so we should probably look into supporting a launch story board.

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#4

Still actual:

#5

If we add the backgroundColor with clear_color value to the ViewController.m view, it is safe for Defold?

Perhaps this will indirectly fix the situation if this blink is the black color of the UIWindow.

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#6

Ticket #6142.

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#7

Running into the same issue. Anyone ever figure out a workaround for this?

#8

The recommendation is to have a tiny bootstrap collection that launches extremely quickly and then use collection proxies to load the bulk of your content. This should minimize/remove the chance to see a black screen while the bootsrap collection is loading.

#9

And, setting the graphics device clear color to something matching the splash screen/main menu will also help make it look better.

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#10

Thank you for the quick answers! But even with the tiniest app and the right clear colors I can see a black flash. And worse, it appears that if the app is loaded ‘cold’ iOS does a ‘nice’ crossfade between launch screen and app, resulting in a slightly longer black screen. Not sure if that is what happens, but that is what it appears like.

So after some digging and talking to chatGPT about possible fixes I ended on the following solution: in the didFinishLaunchingWithOptions method in AppDelegate, load the launch screen storyboard and put it front like so:

	// Load the LaunchScreen storyboard
	UIStoryboard *storyboard = [UIStoryboard storyboardWithName:@"LaunchScreen" bundle:nil];
	UIViewController *launchScreenVC = [storyboard instantiateInitialViewController];
	UIView *launchScreenView = launchScreenVC.view;

	// Add the launch screen view as a placeholder
	launchScreenView.frame = self.window.bounds;
	launchScreenView.tag = 999; // Set a tag to identify the view later
	[self.window addSubview:launchScreenView];
	[self.window bringSubviewToFront:launchScreenView];
	[self.window makeKeyAndVisible];

Then remove this UIView in the appUpdate method

	// Cleanup the placeholder view once the engine is initialized
	static dispatch_once_t onceToken;
	dispatch_once(&onceToken, ^{
		dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{
			UIWindow *window = [UIApplication sharedApplication].keyWindow;
			UIView *viewToRemove = [window viewWithTag:999];
			[viewToRemove removeFromSuperview];
		});
	});

Currently I have this working through a native extension by using method swizzling and it looks much smoother. I could make the changes to the engine myself and put in a pull request, however I don’t know how to access the Launch Screen setting in the editor so that it correctly loads the launch screen set by the user.

#11

Also, not sure if this method is considered ‘clean’ enough codewise, but it works very smoothly.

#12

So, the issue happens even if you’ve set a custom story board in the game.project, under “ios”:“launch_screen”?

The file is copied during bundling, and setting is set in the Info.plist, as “launch-screen”:

Edit: And yes, we would very much like a fix for the issue as a PR. Perhaps continue relevant technical discussion to the PR?

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#13

Oh yeah a black flash happens even if you set up a launch screen according to the documentation. If you don’t, the launch is just black altogether.

I’ll start working on getting the fix in

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