How to change Status Bar text color in iOS

1. Set the UIViewControllerBasedStatusBarAppearance to YES in the .plist file.

2. In the viewDidLoad do a [self setNeedsStatusBarAppearanceUpdate];

3. Add the following method:

   - (UIStatusBarStyle)preferredStatusBarStyle
   { 
       return UIStatusBarStyleLightContent; 
   }
   

Note: This does not work for controllers inside UINavigationController, please see Tyson's comment below :)

Swift 3 - This will work controllers inside UINavigationController. Add this code inside your controller.

// Preferred status bar style lightContent to use on dark background.
// Swift 3
override var preferredStatusBarStyle: UIStatusBarStyle {
    return .lightContent
}

Swift 5 and SwiftUI

For SwiftUI create a new swift file called HostingController.swift

import Foundation
import UIKit
import SwiftUI

class HostingController: UIHostingController<ContentView> {
    override var preferredStatusBarStyle: UIStatusBarStyle {
        return .lightContent
    }
}

Then change the following lines of code in the SceneDelegate.swift

window.rootViewController = UIHostingController(rootView: ContentView())

to

window.rootViewController = HostingController(rootView: ContentView())

Alternatively, you can opt out of the view-controller based status bar appearance:

1. Set View controller-based status bar appearance to NO in your Info.plist.
2. Call [[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarStyle:UIStatusBarStyleLightContent];

Note: This method has been deprecated in iOS9. Use preferredStatusBarStyle on the UIViewController instead. (see Apple Developer Library)