The time when the Android status bar was only black, without any transparency is now long since forgotten. With the release of KitKat, Google officially added support for translucent status and navigation bars to the default launcher and system UI, so every application can now use transparency.

Android development is evolving, and now most of things can be achieved without changing a line of code in smali. Xposed Framework by XDA Senior Recognized Developer rovo89 is a powerful tool for both users and developers. One of the modules presented by XDA Forum Member Woalk gives users the ability to change the status bar's transparency style easily.

The module has eight available styles that can be applied. The list includes styles from Android L and HTC Sense 5, so if you are using the stock KitKat style, perhaps it's the good time to see how this looks on other distributions. The only requirement (in addition to being rooted and having Xposed installed) is that your ROM must be AOSP or close to it. In the future, the list of supported styles will be expanded.

If you want to learn how to change the style of your status and navigation bars, head over to the status bar transparency module thread. From there, just download, install, and enable the module.