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

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.

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.

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.