UIStatusBarStyle PreferredStatusBarStyle does not

Question

In my iPhone application built with Xcode 5 for iOS 7 I set UIViewControllerBasedStatusBarAppearance=YES in info.plist, and in my ViewController I have this code:

-(UIStatusBarStyle) preferredStatusBarStyle
{
    return UIStatusBarStyleLightContent;
}

But the status bar is still black against the black background.

I know its possible to change this app-wide by setting UIViewControllerBasedStatusBarAppearance=NO in info.plist, but I actually need to alter this on a viewController by viewController basis at runtime.

Answer 1

If in case you wanted to hide the statusBar during splashScreen but wanted to change the style to light content (StatusBarInitiallyHidden on Plist has to be NO to hide statusBar on splash), you can add this to appDelegate's didFinishLaunchingWithOptions method to change to lightContent.

[[UIApplication sharedApplication]setStatusBarHidden:NO withAnimation:UIStatusBarAnimationSlide];
[[UIApplication sharedApplication]setStatusBarStyle:UIStatusBarStyleLightContent];

Answer 2

OK, here's the trick. You do have to add the key "View controller-based status bar" and set the value to No.

This is counter to what it appears the meaning of this key is, but even if you set the value to No, you can still change the appearance of the status bar, and whether it shows or not in any view controller. So it acts like "Yes" but set it to "No"!

Now I can get the status bar white or dark.

Answer 3

You can set the status bar style. It will resembles the status bar like IOS 6 and below.
Paste this methods in your view controller

-(UIStatusBarStyle)preferredStatusBarStyle{
    return UIStatusBarStyleBlackOpaque;
}

and call this method from view did load like this

if([[[UIDevice currentDevice] systemVersion] floatValue] >= 7.0f)
    {
       [self setNeedsStatusBarAppearanceUpdate];
    }

Answer 4

Here is how I solved it. Usually the navigationController or tabBarController are the ones deciding the appearance of the status bar (hidden, color, etc).

So I ended up subclassing the navigation controller and overriding preferredStatusBarStyle. if the current visible ViewContorller implements StatusBarStyleHandler I ask for the value to be used as the style, if it doesn't I just return a default value.

The way you trigger an update of the status bar appearance is by calling setNeedsStatusBarAppearanceUpdate which triggers preferredStatusBarStyle again and updates UI according to what the method returns

public protocol StatusBarStyleHandler {
    var preferredStatusBarStyle: UIStatusBarStyle { get }
}

public class CustomNavigationCotnroller: UINavigationController {

    public override var preferredStatusBarStyle: UIStatusBarStyle {
        if let statusBarHandler = visibleViewController as? StatusBarStyleHandler {
            return statusBarHandler.preferredStatusBarStyle
        }

        return .default
    }
}

Then usage

public class SomeController: UIViewController, StatusBarStyleHandler {

    private var statusBarToggle = true

    // just a sample for toggling the status bar style each time method is called
    private func toggleStatusBarColor() {
        statusBarToggle = !statusBarToggle
        setNeedsStatusBarAppearanceUpdate()
    }

    public override var preferredStatusBarStyle: UIStatusBarStyle {
        return statusBarToggle ? .lightContent : .default
    }
}