How to Set Style of the Statusbar Embedded in a Navigation Controller on iOS13

Updating the status bar style between view controllers

There is a great deal of misunderstanding promulgated about how to govern the status bar style when your view controller is a child of a navigation controller.

Your child view controllers can implement preferredStatusBarStyle, and this will work correctly if the navigation bar is hidden.

If the navigation bar is showing, the navigation controller sets the status bar style based on the navigation bar's barStyle — to .default if the bar style is .default, and to .lightContent if the bar style is .black. So the correct way for your view controller to set the status bar style, when the navigation bar is showing, is to set the navigation controller's navigation bar style.

The obvious place to do this is in viewWillAppear, which is called whenever this view controller becomes the top of the navigation controller's stack:

override func viewWillAppear(_ animated: Bool) {
    super.viewWillAppear(animated)
    self.navigationController?.navigationBar.barStyle = .black // or .default
}

Preferred status bar style of view controller is ignored when in navigation controller

When you're in a navigation controller that will not get called. The navigation controller's preferredStatusBarStyle will be called. Try this along with your code:

extension UINavigationController {

   open override var preferredStatusBarStyle: UIStatusBarStyle {
      return topViewController?.preferredStatusBarStyle ?? .default
   }
}

How do I prevent iOS 13's Dark Mode from changing the text color in my app's status bar?

iOS 13 Solution(s)

UINavigationController is a subclass of UIViewController! (who knew )

Therefore, when presenting view controllers embedded in navigation controllers, you're not really presenting the embedded view controllers; you're presenting the navigation controllers! UINavigationController, as a subclass of UIViewController, inherits preferredStatusBarStyle and childForStatusBarStyle, which you can set as desired.

Any of the following methods should work:

1. Opt out of Dark Mode entirely

   • In your info.plist, add the following property:
     
     • Key - UIUserInterfaceStyle (aka. "User Interface Style")
     • Value - Light

2. Override preferredStatusBarStyle within UINavigationController

   • preferredStatusBarStyle (doc) - The preferred status bar style for the view controller

   • Subclass or extend UINavigationController

       class MyNavigationController: UINavigationController {
           override var preferredStatusBarStyle: UIStatusBarStyle {
               .lightContent
           }
       }
     

     OR

       extension UINavigationController {
           open override var preferredStatusBarStyle: UIStatusBarStyle {
               .lightContent
           }
       }
     

     
     

3. Override childForStatusBarStyle within UINavigationController

   • childForStatusBarStyle (doc) - Called when the system needs the view controller to use for determining status bar style
   • According to Apple's documentation,

   "If your container view controller derives its status bar style from one of its child view controllers, [override this property] and return that child view controller. If you return nil or do not override this method, the status bar style for self is used. If the return value from this method changes, call the setNeedsStatusBarAppearanceUpdate() method."

   • In other words, if you don't implement solution 3 here, the system will fall back to solution 2 above.

   • Subclass or extend UINavigationController

       class MyNavigationController: UINavigationController {
           override var childForStatusBarStyle: UIViewController? {
               topViewController
           }
       }
     

     OR

       extension UINavigationController {    
           open override var childForStatusBarStyle: UIViewController? {
               topViewController
           }
       }
     

     
     

   • You can return any view controller you'd like above. I recommend one of the following:

     • topViewController (of UINavigationController) (doc) - The view controller at the top of the navigation stack
     • visibleViewController (of UINavigationController) (doc) - The view controller associated with the currently visible view in the navigation interface (hint: this can include "a view controller that was presented modally on top of the navigation controller itself")

Note: If you decide to subclass UINavigationController, remember to apply that class to your nav controllers through the identity inspector in IB.

Edits: Strikethrough edits were made to remove extensions as a suggested answer. Other developers noted that they stopped working in Xcode 11.4 and Apple's documentation discourages the use of this ambiguous behavior.

P.S. My code uses Swift 5.1 syntax /p>

Changing the Status Bar Color for specific ViewControllers using Swift in iOS8

After reading all the suggestions, and trying out a few things, I could get this to work for specific viewcontrollers using the following steps :

First Step:

Open your info.plist and insert a new key named "View controller-based status bar appearance" to NO

Second Step (Just an explanation, no need to implement this):

Normally we put the following code in the application(_:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:)
method of the AppDelegate,

Swift 2

UIApplication.sharedApplication().statusBarStyle = .LightContent

Swift 3

UIApplication.shared.statusBarStyle = .lightContent

but that affects the statusBarStyle of all the ViewControllers.

So, how to get this working for specific ViewControllers - Final Step:

Open the viewcontroller file where you want to change the statusBarStyle and put the following code in viewWillAppear(),

Swift 2

UIApplication.sharedApplication().statusBarStyle = .LightContent

Swift 3

UIApplication.shared.statusBarStyle = .lightContent

Also, implement the viewWillDisappear() method for that specific viewController and put the following lines of code,

Swift 2

override func viewWillDisappear(animated: Bool) {
    super.viewWillDisappear(animated)
    UIApplication.sharedApplication().statusBarStyle = UIStatusBarStyle.Default

}

Swift 3

override func viewWillDisappear(_ animated: Bool) {
    super.viewWillDisappear(animated)
    UIApplication.shared.statusBarStyle = UIStatusBarStyle.default
}

This step will first change the statusBarStyle for the specific viewcontroller and then change it back to default when the specific viewcontroller disappears. Not implementing the viewWillDisappear() will change the statusBarStyle permanently to the new defined value of UIStatusBarStyle.LightContent

UIStatusBarStyle PreferredStatusBarStyle does not work on iOS 7

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.

How to change Status Bar text color in iOS

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

2. In the viewDidLoad do a [self setNeedsStatusBarAppearanceUpdate];

3. Add the following method:

   - (UIStatusBarStyle)preferredStatusBarStyle
   { 
       return UIStatusBarStyleLightContent; 
   }
   

Note: This does not work for controllers inside UINavigationController, please see Tyson's comment below :)

Swift 3 - This will work controllers inside UINavigationController. Add this code inside your controller.

// Preferred status bar style lightContent to use on dark background.
// Swift 3
override var preferredStatusBarStyle: UIStatusBarStyle {
    return .lightContent
}

Swift 5 and SwiftUI

For SwiftUI create a new swift file called HostingController.swift

import Foundation
import UIKit
import SwiftUI

class HostingController: UIHostingController<ContentView> {
    override var preferredStatusBarStyle: UIStatusBarStyle {
        return .lightContent
    }
}

Then change the following lines of code in the SceneDelegate.swift

window.rootViewController = UIHostingController(rootView: ContentView())

to

window.rootViewController = HostingController(rootView: ContentView())

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