prefersStatusBarHidden not updating after calling setNeedsStatusBarAppearanceUpdate()

Question

Different vcs inside my app show the status bar visible and others are hidden. This is set to YES in the info.pList

 "View controller-based status bar appearance": YES

 // also tried togging this between yes and no
 "Status bar is initially hidden": YES

The app has 2 windows, the main window and a second window. The second window gets presented it front of the main window on a button push. The vc in the second window has the status bar hidden.

The problem is if I'm on a vc (mainVC) inside the main window that shows the status bar, I press the button to show the second window, mainVC's status bar disappears. The second window gets presented and after I dismiss it I send a notification to mainVC to call setNeedsStatusBarAppearanceUpdate() but prefersStatusBarHidden isn't triggered so the status bar stays hidden even though it shouldn't be. I even subclassed a Navigation Controller and added the code there with mainVC as it's root.

Why isn't prefersStatusBarHidden getting called?

I added prefersStatusBarHidden inside the mainVC by itself, the nav to the mainVC by itself, and then in both the mainVC and it's nav at the same time. It's still not getting called after setNeedsStatusBarAppearanceUpdate() gets called in either places.

Subclassed nav:

class MainVCNavController: UINavigationController {

    override init(rootViewController: UIViewController) {
        super.init(rootViewController: rootViewController)

        NotificationCenter.default.addObserver(self, selector: #selector(updateStatusBar), name: NSNotification.Name(rawValue: "updateStatusBar"), object: nil)
    }

    let statusBarHidden: Bool = false

    @objc func updateStatusBar() {
        self.setNeedsStatusBarAppearanceUpdate() // this gets called when the notification is triggered
    }

    override var prefersStatusBarHidden: Bool {
        return statusBarHidden // this doesn't get called after setNeedsStatusBarAppearanceUpdate() is called 
    }

    // I added this just to see if it would make a difference but it didn't
    override var preferredStatusBarUpdateAnimation: UIStatusBarAnimation {
        return .slide
    }

    override open var childViewControllerForStatusBarStyle: UIViewController? {
        return self.topViewController
    }

    override open var childViewControllerForStatusBarHidden: UIViewController? {
        return self.topViewController
    }

    required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
        super.init(coder: aDecoder)
    }

    override init(nibName nibNameOrNil: String?, bundle nibBundleOrNil: Bundle?) {
        super.init(nibName: nibNameOrNil, bundle: nibBundleOrNil)
    }
}

MainVC is the rootVC of the above nav

class MainVCController: UIViewController {

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()

        NotificationCenter.default.addObserver(self, selector: #selector(updateStatusBar), name: NSNotification.Name(rawValue: "updateStatusBar"), object: nil)
    }

    let statusBarHidden: Bool = false

    @objc func updateStatusBar() {
        self.setNeedsStatusBarAppearanceUpdate() // this gets called when the notification is called
    }

    override var prefersStatusBarHidden: Bool {
        return statusBarHidden // this doesn't get called after setNeedsStatusBarAppearanceUpdate() is triggered 
    }

    // I added this just to see if it would make a difference but it didn't
    override var preferredStatusBarUpdateAnimation: UIStatusBarAnimation {
        return .slide
    }
}

SecondVC inside the second window has it's status bar hidden. It sends the notification when it's dismissed to the above mainVC:

class SecondController: UIViewController {

    override var prefersStatusBarHidden: Bool {
        return true
    }

    if dismissed {
       NotificationCenter.default.post(name: Notification.Name(rawValue: "updateStatusBar"), object: nil)
    }
}

I also read that I need to call the below to trigger the prefersStatusBarHidden but even when I added these to the updateStatusBar() it didn't make a difference.

navigationController?.setNavigationBarHidden(false, animated: false)
// or
navigationController?.navigationBar.isHidden = false

Answer 1

Updating the status bar needs to be on the main thread.

There are two ways to ensure that:

Add notification observer on the main thread: (you don't need to expose the func to objc c):

NotificationCenter.default.addObserver(forName: NSNotification.Name(rawValue: "updateStatusBar"), object: nil, queue: .main, using: updateStatusBar)

func updateStatusBar(_ notification: Notification) {
    setNeedsStatusBarAppearanceUpdate()
}

Or update the status bar on the main thread:

NotificationCenter.default.addObserver(self, selector: #selector(updateStatusBar(_:)), name: NSNotification.Name(rawValue: "updateStatusBar"), object: nil)

@objc func updateStatusBar(_ notification: Notification) {

    DispatchQueue.main.sync {
        self.setNeedsStatusBarAppearanceUpdate()
    }
}