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

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

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
}