App Launch Branding: Icon, Splash and Launch Animation

Most apps get the first two seconds wrong in ways no test sees: a splash held for two seconds of nothing, a logo that jumps when the app takes over from the native splash, a second colour flashing, a full-screen splash that Android 12 crops to a disc, an iOS icon with alpha that App Store Connect refuses, or a fork still wearing its parent's icon.

This skill draws the icon and splash from one source, generates the platform assets from it, and replaces a static splash with a short launch. It works on Flutter, React Native and Expo: the check and the asset generator handle all three, and the launch components ship as Dart widgets and as React Native components (LaunchIntro.tsx, DealIn.tsx), with a guide for the Expo splash config plugin and react-native-bootsplash.

What it does

• Asks which mode fits the app first. Instant: tools opened in a hurry, where the first screen is built under the native splash and its pieces deal in. Intro: a brand moment of about 0.75 s (bloom, sheen or sparkle) and an exit (lift, zoom or fade) into the first screen. Total under 1.2 s, and no motion at all under Reduce Motion.
• Generates the 1024 iOS icon with no alpha, the Android adaptive foreground, the Android 13 themed icon and splash logos sized to survive Android 12's circle. Contact sheets show the icon from 1024 down to 40px on light and dark, and under circle, squircle and square masks.
• Matches the app's first frame to the native splash exactly, so the hand-off is invisible.
• Records a cold launch on an emulator or simulator and lays it out as a timestamped frame grid to read.
• check_branding.py flags disagreeing splash colours, missing images, icon alpha, a splash held 1.5 s or more, animation with no Reduce Motion check, a full-screen background image, and, with --compare, any icon or splash file byte-identical to another app's. On Flutter it also catches a preserve() with no remove(), a stale splash.png, and the Xcode setting flutter_launcher_icons 0.14 writes by mistake.

What you need: Python 3.9+, and a Flutter, React Native or Expo project. Pillow for the asset generator and the launch grid, ffmpeg for recording, librsvg only for SVG art.

Sold on its own; its check also runs inside the store-preflight skill when both are installed.

I build small apps on my own and have a shelf of them on the App Store and Google Play. Each check here is a fault that shipped in one of them.