Overview & Background
In apps with many screens containing header images, a common issue occurs: the system status bar (showing the time, signal, and battery) blends into the background image, making it hard to see. Since these images were dynamically changing across screens, manually adjusting the status bar style wasn’t a viable solution.
Issue addressed: Automatically determine whether the status bar should use light or dark icons based on the brightness of the background image.
This project was created to enhance the user interface experience by ensuring good readability of the system status bar without manual tweaking. The idea was inspired by real-world usability issues in UI-heavy Flutter apps.
Development Process
We a reliable method to calculate the brightness of an image to decide whether a light or dark status bar style was more suitable. This brightness detection was integrated directly into the app’s widget tree, allowing the system UI overlay style to adapt automatically.
To optimize performance, the brightness calculation only considers the pixels at the top of the image where the status bar is located. This ensures minimal overhead while maintaining accuracy.
Outcome
A fully functional Flutter package was developed and successfully integrated into the original project. It proved highly useful and was later published to the Flutter community via pub.dev, where it received surprising interest and positive attention.
Technologies & Tools
- Dart
- Flutter