How to change Status Bar text color in iOS

iOS 7 allows individual view controllers to determine the appearance of the status bar, as described by the Apple developer documentation:

> iOS 7 gives view controllers the ability to adjust the style of the status bar while the app is running. A good way to change the status bar style dynamically is to implement `preferredStatusBarStyle` and—within an animation block—update the status bar appearance and call `setNeedsStatusBarAppearanceUpdate`.

Setting the status bar appearance globally is a two-step process.

First, you need to tell iOS that you don't want to set the status bar appearance on a view-by-view basis.

Then you need to take charge and actually set the new global status bar style.

To disable view-by-view status bar control, you'll need to set the `View controller-based status bar appearance` property in `Info.plist`.

Open the Project Navigator and select the project for your iOS app, then select the Info tab.

Hover over a row, then click the plus sign that appears to add a new property to your `.plist`.

Enter `View controller-based status bar appearance` in the Key field, then make sure the Type field is set to `Boolean`. Finally, enter `NO` in the Value field.

To set a global style for the status bar, add another property under the Info tab with a key of `Status bar style`, a Type of `String` and a Value of `Opaque black style`.

Here's a blog post with a little more detail and some sample code:

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This worked for me:

1. Set the `UIViewControllerBasedStatusBarAppearance` to `YES` in the `plist`

2. The `rootViewController` needs the method implementation for

-(UIStatusBarStyle)preferredStatusBarStyle

Because my `rootViewController` is managed by Cocoapods (`JASidePanelController`) I added this method through a category:

#import "JASidePanelController+StatusBarStyle.h"

@implementation JASidePanelController (StatusBarStyle)

- (UIStatusBarStyle)preferredStatusBarStyle
{
return UIStatusBarStyleLightContent;
}

@end

Just two steps as following:

**Step 1:**

Under the Info tab of the `project target`, Add Row:

`UIViewControllerBasedStatusBarAppearance`, set value `NO`.


**Step 2:**

In the project `AppDelegate.m`:

- (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application
didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions{
…
[application setStatusBarStyle:UIStatusBarStyleLightContent];
…
}

Simply calling

[[UINavigationBar appearance] setBarStyle:UIBarStyleBlack];

in the

-(BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application
didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions {
}

method of my `AppDelegate` works great for me in iOS7.

Just to summarize, edit your project `Info.plist` and add:

`View controller-based status bar appearance` : `NO`

`Status bar style` : `Opaque black style`

or if you have raw key/value plist

`UIViewControllerBasedStatusBarAppearance` : `NO`

`UIStatusBarStyle` : `Opaque black style`

In AppDelegate.m, add the following.

- (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions{

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarStyle:UIStatusBarStyleLightContent];

}

And in the Plist file, set 'View controller-based status bar appearance' to NO.

On iOS 7, if you want to use UIViewControllerBasedStatusBarAppearance == YES, and your root view controller is UINavigationController, you should
subclass it and overload childViewControllerForStatusBarStyle, for example, like this:

- (UIViewController*) childViewControllerForStatusBarStyle
{
return self.viewControllers.lastObject;
}

After this, preferredStatusBarStyle will be called on pushed view controllers.

You can use this for iOS 6 and 7:

#ifdef __IPHONE_7_0
# define STATUS_STYLE UIStatusBarStyleLightContent
#else
# define STATUS_STYLE UIStatusBarStyleBlackTranslucent
#endif

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarStyle:STATUS_STYLE animated:YES];

None of that worked for me, so here is a working solution...

In `Info.plist`, add a row:

`UIViewControllerBasedStatusBarAppearance`, and set the value `NO`.

Then in AppDelegate in `didFinishLaunchingWithOptions`, add these rows:

[application setStatusBarHidden:NO];
[application setStatusBarStyle:UIStatusBarStyleLightContent];

Well, this is really working like a piece of cake for me.

Go to your app's `info.plist`.

1. Set `View controller-based status bar appearance` to `NO`
2. Set `Status bar style` to `UIStatusBarStyleLightContent`

Then go to your app's delegate and paste in the following code where you set your windows's RootViewController.

#define SYSTEM_VERSION_GREATER_THAN_OR_EQUAL_TO(v) ([[[UIDevice currentDevice] systemVersion] compare:v options:NSNumericSearch] != NSOrderedAscending)

if (SYSTEM_VERSION_GREATER_THAN_OR_EQUAL_TO(@"7.0"))
{
UIView *view=[[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0,320, 20)];
view.backgroundColor=[UIColor colorWithRed:0/255.0 green:0/255.0 blue:0/255.0 alpha:1.0];
[self.window.rootViewController.view addSubview:view];
}

Bingo. It's working for me.