In Rails 4 the static index.html file has been removed from the public directory and the functionality has been moved to a dynamic route instead. This means that you no longer have to delete public/index.html every time you start a new Rails application.
A new Rails internal controller Rails::WelcomeController has been introduced to serve the dynamic welcome screen. If your application does not have a root route defined in routes.rb, it will render the rails/welcome#index action instead.