How to set status bar's content color to white on iOS 7

Question

My App’s background colour is black. Cause the whole view is below the status bar on iOS 7, the content on the status bar will hard to be distinguished. So how to change status bar’s content colour to white?

I've tried preferredStatusBarStyle and several other ways, but failed.

Answer 1

1. Set "View controller-based status bar appearance” to NO in your info.list file;

2. Insert

   [[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarStyle:UIStatusBarStyleLightContent];
   

   to -application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: of the AppDelegate.m.

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Note: UIStatusBarStyleDefault is the default value for the status bar style, it'll show black content instead. Both UIStatusBarStyleBlackTranslucent & UIStatusBarStyleBlackOpaque are deprecated in iOS 7.0.

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UPDATE for iOS 9:

As @ZakariaDarwish mentioned, the method -setStatusBarStyle is deprecated in iOS 9. (Note: The original question was asked for iOS 7 long time ago, and I don't support it now, the new solution below works for me under iOS 9, hence update here.)

So, the only way left (at least for now) is to implement -preferredStatusBarStyle in your view controller (remember to set "View controller-based status bar appearance" back to YES).

You can invoke UIViewController's instance method -setNeedsStatusBarAppearanceUpdate once value changed in -preferredStatusBarStyle or -prefersStatusBarHidden.

There're also two methods -childViewControllerForStatusBarStyle & -childViewControllerForStatusBarHidden to return the preferred style from child view controller as you want.

e.g., if you used below methods

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarStyle:UIStatusBarStyleDefault animated:YES];
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarStyle:UIStatusBarStyleLightContent animated:YES];

to switch status bar style before, you can use code sample below

- (void)shouldChangeStatusBarStyleToLightContent:(BOOL)toLightContent
                                        animated:(BOOL)animated
{
  _shouldChangeStatusBarStyleToLightContent = toLightContent;
  if (animated) {
    [UIView animateWithDuration:.3f animations:^{ [self setNeedsStatusBarAppearanceUpdate]; }];
  } else {
    [self setNeedsStatusBarAppearanceUpdate];
  }
}

- (UIStatusBarStyle)preferredStatusBarStyle
{
  return (_shouldChangeStatusBarStyleToLightContent ? UIStatusBarStyleLightContent : UIStatusBarStyleDefault);
}

for this updated solution now.