Plymouth

Add plymouth to the HOOKS array in mkinitcpio.conf. It must be added after base and udev for it to work:

/etc/mkinitcpio.conf

HOOKS=(base udev plymouth ...)

After adding the plymouth-encrypt hook, if input goes to the background in plaintext instead of into the password prompt you need to add your (kernel) graphics driver to your initramfs. For example, if using intel:

This might also be a step needed for some themes to work.

If your mkinitcpio.conf includes the hook, then replace plymouth with . Additionally, if using hard drive encryption, use sd-encrypt instead of or plymouth-encrypt:

After installing Plymouth, dracut will automatically detect it and add it to your initramfs images. If autodetection fails, you can force dracut to include Plymouth by adding the following line to your dracut configuration:

Append to the kernel parameters. See Silent boot for other parameters to limit the output to the console.

If using GDM, install which supports smooth transition out of the box (no other steps are required as it cleanly replaces gdm).

Optimus-manager users on GDM can install , which is a fork of with the required patches to support Prime switching.

Users of other display managers (SDDM, LightDM or LXDM) will have to:

1. Disable your display manager unit, e.g. .
2. Enable the respective DM-plymouth unit provided, e.g. .

Plymouth has a configuration option to delay the splash screen:

/etc/plymouth/plymouthd.conf

[Daemon]
Theme=spinner
ShowDelay=0

On systems that boot quickly, you may only see a flicker of your splash theme before your DM or login prompt is ready. You can set to an interval (in seconds) longer than your boot time to prevent this flicker and only show a blank screen. The default is 0 seconds, so you should not need to change this to a different value to see your splash earlier during boot.

Certain themes (such as spinner) can have their background image changed. On spinner, by default it is a grey noise pattern. To change it, replace with your desired image. You may want to copy and create a new theme when doing this, to prevent it from being overridden by updates to Plymouth. Do not forget to regenerate the theme once changed, see the next section for how.

Plymouth comes with a selection of themes:

1. Fade-in: "Simple theme that fades in and out with shimmering stars"
2. Glow: "Corporate theme with pie chart boot progress followed by a glowing emerging logo"
3. Script: "Script example plugin" (Despite the description seems to be a quite nice Arch logo theme)
4. Solar: "Space theme with violent flaring blue star"
5. Spinner: "Simple theme with a loading spinner"
6. Spinfinity: "Simple theme that shows a rotating infinity sign in the center of the screen"
7. BGRT: A variation of Spinner that keeps the OEM logo if available (BGRT stands for Boot Graphics Resource Table)
8. (Text: "Text mode theme with tricolor progress bar")
9. (Details: "Verbose fallback theme")

In addition you can install other themes from AUR, just have a look at the "Required by"-Array on plymouth^AUR.

All currently installed themes can be listed by using this command:

$ plymouth-set-default-theme -l

or:

By default, the spinner theme is selected. The theme can be changed by editing , for example:

Themes can be previewed without rebuilding, press to switch to a text terminal, log in as root and type:

# plymouthd
# plymouth --show-splash

To quit the preview, press again and type:

# plymouth --quit

Every time a theme is changed, the must be rebuilt. The option ensures that it is rebuilt (otherwise manually run mkinitcpio -P):

# plymouth-set-default-theme -R theme

Edit as

/etc/plymouth/plymouthd.conf

DeviceScale=<an-integer-scaling-factor>

and rebuild the initrd.

During boot you can switch to kernel messages by pressing the or keys.

To add the Arch Logo to the spinner and BGRT themes copy the Arch logo to the spinner theme directory with the name :

# cp /usr/share/plymouth/arch-logo.png /usr/share/plymouth/themes/spinner/watermark.png

To center the logo (if not already centered), add the following lines to the theme's configuration file (file name ending with , e.g. ):

WatermarkHorizontalAlignment=.5
WatermarkVerticalAlignment=.5

The following themes use the Arch Linux logo supplied by Plymouth in : fade-in, script, solar, spinfinity. If you want to use another logo, you can take one of them or one of the plymouth themes in AUR, edit the file (and maybe *.script, too) and replace this image with one of your choice. You should create a package from your newly created theme, because changes in may not be persistent across package upgrades.

After installing and selecting your theme, you should rebuild the initrd image to use the new splash.

Add to kernel parameters.

On systems with a very fast boot time, it might necessary to add a delay to plymouth-quit.service with a drop-in snippet containing if showing the whole animation is desired.

See this reddit post.