Thanks - I tried that Instrument but it was no help. Maybe I wasn't using it correctly, but I could not see any information in the graph where my NSURLConnection appeared.

Yes I am sure. I even opened the .pbprojx file (or however it us spelled) and looked in it for the compatibility version and it says 3.2.

This is not working for me - it's always black. I have an old Objective-C app, not sure if that makes a difference. I also tried adding "View-Controller-based status bar appearance" and "Status bar style" to the plist. No dice. Why they gotta make this stuff so difficult, and change it every 2 years...

I found that doing this changes the background of the entire view, not just the bar. For me, this changes the appearance of just the bar (objective-C): navigationController.navigationBar.backgroundColor = color

That works great! Weird that it's not readily available in our developer account settings somewhere. Thanks!