Splash Image/Video Customization

Batocera displays a total of three splash images during a regular boot sequence:

  1. The boot splash
  2. The custom user splash
  3. The EmulationStation loading splash

The custom user splash can be either of the following:

  • MP4 videos (for RPi, RPi2, RPi3, Odroid XU4, Odroid N2/N2+, Khadas VIM3 and RockPro64… and Pi4, s905gen3 and PC on Batocera v31 and higher)
  • A static PNG image (for all platforms)

Video (if available for the platform) gets higher loading priority than images if both are present in the custom user splash folder. Here are some splash screen/video resources:

Since Batocera 5.27 the process of adding splash images or videos is much easier to do. Just copy the appropriate files to /userdata/splash/. On the next reboot you will see your new splashes!

In Batocera v31 and lower, those splash videos will be copied into your /boot partition, which has limited space. Depending on your architecture, the sizes of your potential overlays and many other parameters, you might be limited to 100 MB or so space that you can actually use. Make sure you don't put too many videos in your splash directory or you may not be able to update in the future! Again, this only applies to v31 and lower.

You can have multiple MP4 videos or PNG image files in splash and the system will select one at random.

On the Odroid Go Advance and other devices, according to the bootloader at least, the screen is physically rotated. So either you need to rotate your splash screen 90 degrees counter-clockwise or utilize the display.rotate option specified below to rotate the screen system-wide.

To disable splash video altogether, you can also disable it in the same file /boot/batocera-boot.conf with:

splash.screen.enabled=0

Don't forget that for any modification on /boot/, you should read this instruction page on how to do so first.

By default, the sound is enabled. To disable it, edit the file batocera.conf (from the SHARE partition of your SDCard/USB, not the same as above) to get a line exactly like this one (without #):

splash.screen.sound=0

If you need to rotate the splash video, you can tune this parameter in the same file batocera.conf (which also rotates EmulationStation):

display.rotate=1

The value for rotation can be 0, 1, 2 or 3 representing 0, 90, 180 or 270 degrees of rotation respectively.

By default, the Batocera version is overlaid on top of the video. To disable the overlay, edit the file batocera.conf (from the SHARE partition of your SDCard/USB) to get a line exactly like this one (without #):

splash.screen.subtitle=0

If you want to resize the splash video to a new resolution, add the following line to batocera.conf (Batocera v32 and above):

splash.screen.resize=1280x720

With of course the resolution you want.

This can help with laggy splash videos on 4k TVs! Though, depending on the TV, this might not help at all.

If you want to run your video splash screen for the whole length of it, edit /userdata/system/batocera.conf (or from the SHARE network folder, yes, this is not the same file as above!) and, if you want to make it 42 seconds, add a line like:

splash.screen.length=42 

Any value can be set between 0 and 90 seconds.

If instead you'd like to edit the splash image that shows while EmulationStation is parsing the games list (the loading bar), you can instead edit /usr/share/emulationstation/resources/logo.png and then run batocera-save-overlay via SSH. You'll have to do this every update. Keep in mind this can be overridden by custom themes, in this case you'll need to find the equivalent file within that theme's folder.

You'll notice that Batocera always displays the default Batocera splash image before your own custom one. This is by design, as Batocera cannot access the userdata partition until later in the boot sequence. If you'd like to change this image, however, you still can. Simply replace the file at /usr/share/batocera/splash/boot-logo.png with another PNG file and then run batocera-save-overlay via SSH. You'll have to do this every update. Note that you can only replace the PNG image with another PNG image, other types of media will simply not be read.

You may notice there is a separate splash.mp4 file, this is the “default” splash video. If intending on using your own splash video, there is no need to replace this here as any video file found in /userdata/splash/ will automatically replace this at boot.

In case you'd like to completely “disable” it, here is a black PNG image file you can use in its place (click for the full 1920×1080 image):

Eternal darkness.

Click to expand
Image splash boot

You can change the splash boot image by putting your own file as /boot/splash.png. On Batocera 5.25+, you can have multiple *.png files in /boot and the system will select one at random.

Please note that throughout this page, the path /boot refers to the Linux path on your Batocera box. However, if you mount your Batocera USB key/SD card on a Windows machine, that path will be the root of your mount point shown as BATOCERA like F:\ or whatever is your mount letter for your Batocera USB key/SD card.

Disable sound on Video Splash for older Batocera versions

By default, the sound is enabled. To disable it, edit the file /boot/batocera-boot.conf on the USB drive/SD card to get a line exactly like this one (without #):

splashsound = off
  • splash_boot.txt
  • Last modified: 22 months ago
  • by lbrpdx