After reading tons of threads online and spending many hours trying to figure this out, I found a solution for eliminating the black screen that appears between the launch screen and the main app screen (something that I didn't see anyone else mention). It is very simple: leave out the .storyboard extension of the name of the launch screen. With this small (and illogical) change, my launch screen remains visible until it is replaced by the actual app, no more black in between. To solve this problem, I made this change in Info.plist: From: <key>UILaunchStoryboardName</key> <string>LaunchScreen.storyboard</string> To: <key>UILaunchStoryboardName</key> <string>LaunchScreen</string> You can also make this change by editing the "Launch screen interface file base name" property value to remove the .storyboard part of the name shown there. I hope this helps others!