iPhone 6 and 6 Plus LaunchScreen.storyboard for Xamarin

Following on from the previous post about adding launch images for iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, here are the instructions for adding a LaunchScreen.storyboard file instead of multiple fixed-size images. Apple's documentation recommends this method over using the static images. I used these instructions for replacing launch images with storyboards as a reference.

Configuring a LaunchScreen like this will automatically scale up your app for iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus devices. You might also want to consider adding @3x retina images for iPhone 6 Plus support.

1. Add a new Storyboard to your project and call it LaunchScreen.storyboard.

2. Drag a UIViewController in and design your launch screen. I chose a black background with some white centered text - it looks like this (use the VIEW AS option to preview in different sizes):

3. Open the iPhone application Project Options and scroll down to the iPhone Launch Images section. There is a new Launch Screen dropdown (currently in Beta) that will automatically be populated with the available storyboards and xibs in your project. Choose the storyboard you just added.

3a. This creates the following key in your Info.plist (just FYI):

 <key>UILaunchStoryboardName</key>
 <string>LaunchScreen</string>

4. When you build the app, appropriate launch images will be generated for your app. Here's a shot of the emulator starting up showing the launch image for iPhone 6:

I've updated my Xamarin.Forms Todo sample, the code and storyboard are available on github.

UPDATE: Gerry reminded me about Marco's experience where adding a LaunchImage.storyboard file causes iOS to ignore the UIDeviceFamily setting in Info.plist (which specifies iPhone/iPod, iPad, or Universal app) and upscale iPhone-only apps to full iPad screen size (potentially making your app look really weird!). This behavior still appears to occur on the simulator, so test before you launch :)