May be deleted when software-mansion/react-native-screens#5137 is no longer open.

react-native-screens: wrong status bar style on cold launch

On RN 0.88 with UIViewControllerBasedStatusBarAppearance = YES (the template default), the status bar style should come from RCTStatusBarAppearance, which JS <StatusBar> sets. react-native-screens swizzles childViewControllerForStatusBarStyle/Hidden on every UIViewController, so UIKit asks the top RNSScreen instead. With no statusBarStyle set, that screen answers Auto, and Auto resolves against UITraitCollection.currentTraitCollection. On a cold launch that is the system theme, not the window's overrideUserInterfaceStyle (forced light here by Appearance.setColorScheme('light')).

Steps

1. npm install && cd ios && pod install
2. Set the simulator to dark appearance: xcrun simctl ui <udid> appearance dark.
3. Build Release (JS embedded, no Metro): xcodebuild -workspace ios/StatusBarScreensRepro.xcworkspace -scheme StatusBarScreensRepro -configuration Release -sdk iphonesimulator -destination 'id=<udid>' build, then xcrun simctl install.
4. Cold launch: xcrun simctl terminate <udid> org.reactjs.native.example.StatusBarScreensRepro; xcrun simctl launch <udid> org.reactjs.native.example.StatusBarScreensRepro.

Expected: dark status bar text, as set by <StatusBar barStyle="dark-content" />. Actual: white status bar text.

The background is grey so that white text, dark text and a hidden status bar can be told apart. It doesn't recover when the system theme changes at runtime: the scene keeps the style from launch.

A/B

USE_SCREENS in App.tsx is passed to detachInactiveScreens on the stack navigator. With USE_SCREENS = false the stack renders plain views, no RNSScreen becomes a child of the root view controller, and the text is dark. enableScreens(false) is not an alternative: @react-navigation/stack passes enabled={detachInactiveScreens} to each screen, which overrides it.

USE_SCREENS = true	USE_SCREENS = false

Versions

• react-native 0.88.1 (template, SceneDelegate)
• react-native-screens 4.30.1
• @react-navigation/native 7.5.1, @react-navigation/stack 7.12.1
• react-native-gesture-handler 3.4.0, react-native-safe-area-context 5.11.1
• Xcode 27.1 (27A9275), iOS 27.0 simulator (iPhone 18 Pro)