Technically this is not an answer to your question, but I have been documenting my findings while trying to resolve this issue myself, and here is what I've found so far. I was going to post it as it's own question, but figured it would be closed as a duplicate.
On iOS8 devices running pinned web applications. Regarding the tag :
<meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-status-bar-style" content="black">
From the Apple developer reference:
If content is set to default, the status bar appears normal. If set to black, the status bar has a black background. If set to black-translucent, the status bar is black and translucent. If set to default or black, the web content is displayed below the status bar. If set to black-translucent, the web content is displayed on the entire screen, partially obscured by the status bar. The default value is default.
To enable this functionality, you need to use
<meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes">
In iOS6 and 7 this works more or less as expected.
In iOS8 this appears to be broken entirely. For example, iOS 8.0.2 running on an iPad Air in portrait has the following behaviour:
black results in a transparent background. There is a solid black bar at the bottom of the screendefault or not setting a value results in a transparent background and a solid white bar at the bottom of the screenblack-translucent results in a transparent background, but no annoying bars at the bottom of the screen
In all cases, the content appears "beneath" the bar. i.e. the bar does not push content down.
On an iPhone6, the status bar does not display at all in landscape. In portrait however, the following behaviour:
black works as expected, and content is pushed down (wow!!!)default has an empty white bar at the topblack-translucent results in a transparent background, with content underneath
I have not had the opportunity to test on an iPhone6+
The iOS simulator in xcode does not appear to give reliable reproduction of the behaviour that occurs on real devices.
I have tried changing it dynamically with javascript, but it appears to have no effect.
Just to make this even more interesting/frustrating, you can COVER the status bar (clock/wifi etc) by setting styles on the html element. e.g.
html {background: black;}
body {background: #DDD; margin-top: 20px}
The same issue documented elsewhere:
