Status Bar showing black text, only on iPhone 6 iOS 8 simulator

Question

I'm trying to convert my iOS 7 app to iOS 8 in Xcode 6 GM, and when i run it on the iPhone 5s or lower simulators with iOS 8 everything is fine, but on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus simulators, the Status Bar has black text instead of white like it is everywhere anytime else. I've set the Info.plist UIStatusBarStyle to "Transparent Black Style (alpha of 0.5)" thru Xcode, and that seems to have the desired effect everywhere else. Any ideas what is going on?

(I haven't touched any of the storyboards yet, could it be anything with that? I was hoping I could put that off for a while:)

Answer 1

So here is how I fixed it

In PLIST View Controller Based Status Bar NO Status Bar Style UIStatusBarStyleLightContent

In AppDelegate DidFinishLaunching

[UIApplication sharedApplication].statusBarStyle = UIStatusBarStyleLightContent;
    [self.window setBackgroundColor:[UIColor whiteColor]];

In Each View Controller

- (UIStatusBarStyle) preferredStatusBarStyle {
    return UIStatusBarStyleLightContent;
}

Answer 2

This bug only occurs if your app is being scaled to fit the resolution of the newer devices.

A quick fix (who knows whether this will even get addressed in 8.1) is to provide the proper resolution loading images in your app package.

From https://developer.apple.com/ios/human-interface-guidelines/graphics/launch-screen/

For iPhone 7, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6:

750 x 1334 (@2x) for portrait
1334 x 750 (@2x) for landscape

For iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 6 Plus:

1242 x 2208 (@3x) for portrait
2208 x 1242 (@3x) for landscape

In my app, we only support portrait, so providing the 750x1334 and 1242x2208 fixed it.

And just to confirm in case it wasn't obvious, you DO need to be using UIStatusBarStyleLightContent for your status bar style.

Answer 3

My app's status bar was working fine in iOS 7 using only the project/target settings:

Status bar style = UIStatusBarStyleLightContent

and

View controller-based status bar appearance = NO

but in iOS 8 (iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus simulators) the status bar was not showing up. Changing View controller-based status bar appearance to YES and then adding:

    // Objective C
    - (UIStatusBarStyle) preferredStatusBarStyle {
         return UIStatusBarStyleLightContent;
    }
    //Swift
    override func preferredStatusBarStyle() -> UIStatusBarStyle {
    return UIStatusBarStyle.LightContent
    }

to the ViewController resulted in seeing the white status bar again, but only after the initial root controller launches. During the initial launch the status bar remains black.

Answer 4

A similar answer (currently voted as 2nd) has already posted, buy in the interests of keeping this post up-to-date, here is the Swift version.

1. Add a row to your info.plist file called View controller-based status bar appearance and set its boolean value to NO.

2. In your AppDelegate.swift file, add the following method: func application(application: UIApplication, didFinishLaunchingWithOptions launchOptions: [NSObject : AnyObject]?) -> Bool { UIApplication.sharedApplication().statusBarStyle = .LightContent return true }

3. I didn't need to do this step in order for it to work (i.e. do steps 1 and 2 and it might work). If not, try adding the following method to each of your ViewControllers:

   override func preferredStatusBarStyle() -> UIStatusBarStyle { return UIStatusBarStyle.LightContent }

I hope this was helpful,

Loic