android - Reliably get height of status bar to solve KitKat translucent navigation issue

Question

I am experimenting with the new Android 4.4 translucent navigation bars and would like to set the navigation bar as translucent using the FLAG_TRANSLUCENT_NAVIGATION flag. I only wish the navigation bar (back, home button etc) to be translucent - I want the status bar at the top of the screen to appear normally I.e. NOT translucent.

The code I am using to achieve this is:

if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.KITKAT) {
    Window w = getWindow();
    w.setFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_TRANSLUCENT_NAVIGATION, WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_TRANSLUCENT_NAVIGATION);
}

The problem I have is Android now thinks the Activity is fullscreen and places the layout behind the navigation bar (which is correct), unfortunately it also places the layout behind the status bar (a problem).

A hacky fix for this would be to apply a padding to the top of the layout parent View, however I need to determine the height of the status bar to do this.

Could anyone suggest how I get the status bar height, it's not as trivial as I thought it would be, or alternatively suggest a proper solution.

Thanks

Answer 1

public int getStatusBarHeight() {
      int result = 0;
      int resourceId = getResources().getIdentifier("status_bar_height", "dimen", "android");
      if (resourceId > 0) {
          result = getResources().getDimensionPixelSize(resourceId);
      }
      return result;
}

Use the above code in the onCreate method. Put it in a contextWrapper class. http://mrtn.me/blog/2012/03/17/get-the-height-of-the-status-bar-in-android/