QGIS is easily one of the most customizable GIS out there. You can customize the look and feel of the GUI from the theme, visible toolbars and panels, font used, and even add hats to the QGIS logo but did you know that you can also customize the splash screen that shows when QGIS starts up? Yup. With just a few steps, you can have QGIS running a custom splash screen similar to the image above. Here’s what you need to do:

Enable Interface customization

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. You need to enable Interface customization in order for the custom splash screen to work. To do this:

1. Go to the Interface Customization dialog via Settings -> Interface Customization in the Menu bar.
2. Check/tick [x] Enable customization.
3. Click OK.

Edit the QGISCUSTOMIZATION3.ini file

Activating Interface Customization will create a QGISCUSTOMIZATION3.ini file under the QGIS folder of the current active profile. You can locate this file by opening the Active Profile Folder via Settings -> User Profiles -> Open Active Profile Folder in the Menu bar. If a QGISCUSTOMIZATION3.ini does not exist, that usually means that Interface Customization is not enabled for the User Profile.

Add the following line under [Customization] in the QGISCUSTOMIZATION3.ini file:

splashpath=/path/to/custom/splash/

Save the QGISCUSTOMIZATION3.ini file.

The /path/to/custom/splash/ is the path to the folder/directory that holds the custom splash screen. Take not that it’s the path to the folder/directory and not to the file itself. The example above is for a UNIX/Linux system. For Windows use a double backslash (\\) for the path. For example: C:\\Users\\Me\\Pictures\\.

NOTE: Interface Customization is activated in a per-User Profile basis which means that the customizations you did for one profile will not appear in another profile. So if you want to apply a custom splash screen to all user profiles, you need to activate Interface Customization and edit the file of each User Profile. I think you can also just copy-paste the QGISCUSTOMIZATION3.ini files as long as Interface Customization is activated.

NOTE: To be safe, make a backup of the QGISCUSTOMIZATION3.ini file before editing it.

Create a Custom Splash Screen

The custom splash screen should be:

1. Located in the specified path in the QGISCUSTOMIZATON3.ini file.
2. 600x300 pixels in size.
3. Named splash.png (PNG format is required)

If you did everything right, QGIS should be able to see a custom splash screen the next time you open QGIS. Have fun!

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Hat-tip to Totò Fiandaca for the original post here.