Statusbarz
A Flutter package that switches the status bar icons between light and dark, based on how bright the screen behind them is.
Juho Torkkeli
Overview & background
In apps with many screens that start with a header image, the system status bar (the time, signal and battery) often blends into the image and becomes hard to read. The images changed from screen to screen, so setting the status bar style by hand wasn’t an option.
Statusbarz decides automatically whether the status bar should use light or dark icons, based on how bright the area behind it is. The idea came from real usability problems in UI-heavy Flutter apps.
Development process
We needed a way to measure how bright the background is and decide whether a light or dark status bar style fits better. The check runs inside the app’s widget tree, so the system UI overlay style adapts automatically.
To keep the overhead low, the package doesn’t analyze the whole screen. It samples only the rendered pixels at the top of the screen, where the status bar sits.
Outcome
We integrated the package into the original project, where it proved useful, and then published it on pub.dev for other Flutter developers. It got more interest and positive attention than we expected.
Technologies & tools
- Dart
- Flutter