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

Question

My navigation bar has a white backgroundColor and my status bar uses the dark textColor. When a user changes the iOS theme to Dark Mode, the status bar changes to white text on a white background. As a result, I can't see anything. How can I disable this change for my app?

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

If you set the UIViewControllerBasedStatusBarAppearance key in your app's info.plist to YES, you can override the status bar style in your currently presented view controller:

override var preferredStatusBarStyle: UIStatusBarStyle {
    if #available(iOS 13, *) {
        return .darkContent
    } else {
        return .default
    }
}

and call the setNeedsStatusBarAppearanceUpdate() method

Answer 3

You can write extension to UIStatusBarStyle:

extension UIStatusBarStyle {
    static var black: UIStatusBarStyle {
        if #available(iOS 13.0, *) {
            return .darkContent
        }
        return .default
    }
}

And then you can easily use in your ViewControllers:

override var preferredStatusBarStyle: UIStatusBarStyle {
    .black
}

Answer 4

You can try to make your navigation bar always light

if #available(iOS 13.0, *) {
    navigationController?.navigationBar.overrideUserInterfaceStyle = .light
 }

Answer 5

I have done something like this.

I have toggler function wich toggles Status bar style depending on View Controller displayed

func toggleLight() {
        self.navigationBar.barTintColor = AppColors.White

        isDarkStyle = false
        setNeedsStatusBarAppearanceUpdate()

    }

and here is most important part

override var preferredStatusBarStyle: UIStatusBarStyle {

        if #available(iOS 13.0, *) {
            return isDarkStyle ? .lightContent : .darkContent
        }
        return isDarkStyle ? .lightContent : .default
    }

Where isDarkStyle represents navigation bar background colour dark or light. If it is dark then text (content) should be light, if it is light than text (content) should be default or from iOS 13 dark.

To sum up: .lightContent, .darkContent displays independent of Dark Mode as it is supposed to do. While .default is susceptible to Dark Mode changes!

Answer 6

If you're using a UINavigationController, override the preferredStatusBarStyle in an extension (or your own subclass) like this (just overriding preferredStatusBarStyle in your view controllers won't work):

extension UINavigationController {
  override open var preferredStatusBarStyle: UIStatusBarStyle {
    guard #available(iOS 13, *) else {
      return .default
    }
    return .darkContent
  }
}

And as Frank said, UIViewControllerBasedStatusBarAppearance must be set to YES in your info.plist

Answer 7

There are two ways to solve this problem. Define the childViewControllerForStatusBarStyle function in the UINavigationController descendant class:

@interface MyNavigationController : UINavigationController
...
@end

@implementation MyNavigationController
...
- (UIViewController *)childViewControllerForStatusBarStyle
{
    return self.topViewController;
}
...
@end

After that, you need to add the function preferredStatusBarStyle for each controller.

The second option is to define the preferredStatusBarStyle function for all controllers. But this function should not be located in the root controller, but in the descendant class of the UINavigationController.

@interface MyNavigationController : UINavigationController
...
@end

@implementation MyNavigationController
...
- (UIStatusBarStyle)preferredStatusBarStyle
{
    return UIStatusBarStyleLightContent;
}
...
@end

However, even in this case, it is necessary to define the function preferredStatusBarStyle for all controllers that hide the navigation bar (if any).

Answer 8

This extension helps you to change the status bar text color and support also iOS 13 https://stackoverflow.com/a/59767435/10512612

Answer 9

If anyone else finds that neither of the above answers work (as I did), there's a very specific edge-case if you have multiple windows within a UIWindowScene where it will use the topmost window rather than the key window to determine status bar appearance.

So for example, if you have your key window with a windowLevel set to 1 and a secondary window with a windowLevel set to 1.1, UIKit will (for whatever reason) ask the view controllers in your secondary window for their status bar appearance rather than the ones in the key window, even though its alpha is 0.

Our workaround was simply to only put the secondary window on a higher level when it was active, and lowering it below the key window when it was hidden.