Preventing status bar expansion

You can actually prevent the status bar from expanding, without rooting phone. See this link. This draws a window the height of the status bar and consumes all touch events.

Call the following code just after onCreate().

public static void preventStatusBarExpansion(Context context) {
    WindowManager manager = ((WindowManager) context.getApplicationContext()
            .getSystemService(Context.WINDOW_SERVICE));

    Activity activity = (Activity)context;
    WindowManager.LayoutParams localLayoutParams = new WindowManager.LayoutParams();
    localLayoutParams.type = WindowManager.LayoutParams.TYPE_SYSTEM_ERROR;
    localLayoutParams.gravity = Gravity.TOP;
    localLayoutParams.flags = WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_NOT_FOCUSABLE|

    // this is to enable the notification to recieve touch events
    WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_NOT_TOUCH_MODAL |

    // Draws over status bar
    WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_LAYOUT_IN_SCREEN;

    localLayoutParams.width = WindowManager.LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT;
    //https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1016896/get-screen-dimensions-in-pixels
    int resId = activity.getResources().getIdentifier("status_bar_height", "dimen", "android");
    int result = 0;
    if (resId > 0) {
        result = activity.getResources().getDimensionPixelSize(resId);
    }

    localLayoutParams.height = result;

    localLayoutParams.format = PixelFormat.TRANSPARENT;

    customViewGroup view = new customViewGroup(context);

    manager.addView(view, localLayoutParams);
}

public static class customViewGroup extends ViewGroup {

    public customViewGroup(Context context) {
        super(context);
    }

    @Override
    protected void onLayout(boolean changed, int l, int t, int r, int b) {
    }

    @Override
    public boolean onInterceptTouchEvent(MotionEvent ev) {
        Log.v("customViewGroup", "**********Intercepted");
        return true;
    }
}