Most guides for Android phones teach you how to change boot animations, which is the video that plays continuously when you turn your phone on. But there is another splash Screen that appears even sooner. This splash shows a logo that flashes very briefly right after pressing the power button. In this guide, we will show you how to change splash screen on Android with all the steps.
This splash is stored in a very small partition on the phone. Changing the boot animation won’t affect it. But with the right tool and some patience you can replace that factory logo Splash Screen with whatever you like on any phone with Qualcomm processors.
Splash Screen vs Boot Animation
Two different things are easy to confuse here. The splash screen is a single static picture. It is the very first thing you see after the phone starts waking up, long before the system finishes loading. The boot animation is a sequence of moving frames that plays later as Android boots. The splash image lives in a partition of its own, usually named splash or logo, and it is displayed by the bootloader hardware before the OS takes over. That is why changing it feels different from installing a boot animation zip.
How to Change Splash Screen on Android: Step-by-Step Guide
Do not start this project unless you have the right tools; your phone might not boot. You need a device with root access; use Magisk, KernelSU or APatch. Grab a Windows PC with PHP installed and ADB and fastboot tools as well. Your phone must have Qualcomm chipsets. This method works only for Snapdragon devices and for OPPO, OnePlus and Realme families including most Xiaomi, Redmi, POCO, Motorola and Nokia phones and other custom ROMs. Phones with MediaTek store logos differently and Samsung usually keeps splash screen in bootloader so this won’t work. Back up everything before you begin.
Step 1: Set Up PHP on Your PC to Change Splash Screen on Android
The tool that edits the splash file is written in PHP, so your PC needs to run it. Download PHP from the official site and install it on Windows. When it is set up, open the php.ini file in a text editor, find the line that reads semicolon “extension=gd“, remove the semicolon so the extension is enabled, and save the file. Without the gd extension, the tool cannot read or write the image files, so get this right first.
Step 2: Get the Splash Tool and Dump Your Old Image
You need a small utility called Magic Splash Wand. It comes in two versions, one for normal Qualcomm phones and one built for OPPO OnePlus Realme devices. Download the one that matches your phone and extract it next to your PHP folder.
Okay, it’s time to get your splash file. Open a terminal on your PC and run this:
adb shell
su
ls -la /dev/block/bootdevice/by-nameLook for an entry named splash. On newer phones the partition is split as splash_a and splash_b for the A and B slots. Write down the block address shown for each, then dump them to your storage with the dd command, adjusting the address to match your own output:
dd if=/dev/block/sde29 of=/sdcard/splash_a.img
dd if=/dev/block/sde60 of=/sdcard/splash_b.imgCopy those files to the same folder as the tool on your PC.
Step 3: Unpack and Edit the Splash Image
Open a command window inside the tool folder and run the unpack command that matches your phone. Use splash.php for normal Qualcomm phones and splash_oplus.php for OPPO OnePlus Realme devices.
php splash.php unpack splash.img (for Qualcomm devices)
php splash_oplus.php unpack splash.img (for OnePlus devices)The tool opens the file and writes the image out to an Output folder. Open that folder and replace the image file with your own design, using the same dimensions as the original. Keep the metadata file in the folder untouched; the tool needs it to rebuild the splash correctly.
Step 4: Repack the Splash Image
Once your new image is ready, run the repack command for your device:
php splash.php repack output
php splash_oplus.php repack outputThis builds a fresh splash.img with your artwork inside. Move that new file into your platform tools folder on the PC.
Step 5: Flash the New Splash and Reboot
Copy the new splash.img file to ADB and fastboot tools folder Then, boot the phone into the bootloader:
adb reboot bootloaderThen flash the file. On a phone with a single splash partition, use the first command, and on an A B phone flash both slots so the change sticks no matter which slot boots:
fastboot flash splash splash.img
fastboot flash splash_a splash.img
fastboot flash splash_b splash.imgFinish by rebooting into the system:
fastboot rebootThe phone powers up with your custom logo on the splash screen.
How to Fix a Boot Loop after Changing splash screen on Android
Flashing the wrong splash file can brick your phone. Don’t panic though; usually the splash partition is simple to fix. Boot into fastboot mode then flash the backup splash image you have made earlier to restore original and reboot. If you did not make a backup grab the stock splash image from firmware files of your model and flash that instead. Damage will be almost certainly confined to the boot logo if you mess only with splash partitions and those parts of the system.
Troubleshooting
- Nothing changed after flashing. Restart your phone. If it is AB based you might have selected the wrong slot. Try flashing both
splash_aandsplash_bagain.- Your splash file will not open in the tool; your phone probably uses OPU format so try
splash_oplus.php. Maybe your device is Qualcomm based and not recognized.- If the flashed image looks strange or blank check that you used exactly the same width and height as the dumped image.
