Is it possible to change the status bar text (foreground) color to an arbitrary color (i.e. not black or white)?

Question

Does anyone know how to change the status bar text color?

I want the text to be in the color orange.

I'm not talking about the regular black or white color

`UIStatusBarStyleLightContent`; or `UIStatusBarStyleBlackOpaque`; or whatever. 

Answer 1

There is no documented way to change the text color to orange. However, it is definitively possible, because I just tried it out and it worked.

Disclaimer: this is all undocumented territorry... it will probably not be approved when you submit it to the app store. however, you may be lucky...

In iOS 7 you can do this:

/// sets the status bar text color. returns YES on success.
/// currently, this only
/// works in iOS 7. It uses undocumented, inofficial APIs.
BOOL setStatusBarColor(UIColor *color)
{
    id statusBarWindow = [[UIApplication sharedApplication] valueForKey:@"statusBarWindow"];
    id statusBar = [statusBarWindow valueForKey:@"statusBar"];

    SEL setForegroundColor_sel = NSSelectorFromString(@"setForegroundColor:");
    if([statusBar respondsToSelector:setForegroundColor_sel]) {
        // iOS 7+
        [statusBar performSelector:setForegroundColor_sel withObject:color];
        return YES;
    } else {
        return NO;
    }
}

in iOS5 and iOS6 it may be possible too, but I haven't tried, because it is much more work. However I have found a method of interest (available in iOS 5 and iOS 6). Class UIStatusBarItemView has an instance method called -textColorForStyle: (which takes an integer and returns an object). You may be able to monkey-patch it to return any color you like.