iOS 7 and later: set status bar style per view controller

Question

I tried many ways to set the status bar style (default or lightcontent) but can\'t get it to work on a per view controller basis. I can set the status bar style for the

Answer 1

In the ViewController that you want to change the status bar's color

- (void) viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated{
    [super viewWillAppear:animated];
    [[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarStyle:UIStatusBarStyleDefault];
}

- (void) viewWillDisappear:(BOOL)animated{
    [super viewWillDisappear:animated];
    [[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarStyle:UIStatusBarStyleLightContent];
}

Answer 2

Swift extension for this because I always forget how this works

extension UIViewController {
    // utility to set the status bar appearance
    // Note: Make sure "View controller-based status bar appearance" is set to NO in your target settings or this won't work
    func setStatusBarForDarkBackground(dark: Bool) {
        UIApplication.sharedApplication().statusBarStyle = dark ? .LightContent : .Default
        setNeedsStatusBarAppearanceUpdate()
    }
}

Answer 3

EDIT: This solution is deprecated on iOS 9. Please choose one of the other answers.

With UIViewControllerBasedStatusBarAppearance set to NO, I was able to set the style to white text by using:

[UIApplication sharedApplication].statusBarStyle = UIStatusBarStyleBlackTranslucent;

This is because the text color on this style was white on iOS 6 and below.

UPDATE: According to @jowie you can try that on iOS8:

[UIApplication sharedApplication].statusBarStyle = UIBarStyleBlack;

Answer 4

On viewDidLoad method, put this:

Objective C

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarStyle:UIStatusBarStyleLightContent];
[self setNeedsStatusBarAppearanceUpdate];

Swift

UIApplication.shared.statusBarStyle = .lightContent
self.setNeedsStatusBarAppearanceUpdate()