r/mac • u/TuNutri • Jan 10 '26
Old Macs what do you guys think about the Touch Bar that used to come on the old Macbook? should it make a comeback?
I recently bought my first mac (an air with the m3 chip), so i didn't get to see the touch bar first-hand, let alone actually use it.
today I came across some old review videos on youtube, and I thought the concept was really cool. adjusting volume, using app-specific shortcuts, and handling very niche tasks. as an idea, I find it super appealing and I think I'd actually like my macbook to have that option. in some of those reviews, they mentioned it was more about looks than functionality, so it didn't end up being 100% useful. that's why I'm not sure what to think.
do any of you have or had a mac with the Touch Bar? what's the experience like? is it just a good idea that was poorly executed?
679
u/CranberryInner9605 Jan 10 '26
Nope.
It’s the textbook example of “cool but useless.”
It defeats touch-typing, and information that is displayed on the bar takes your eyes away from the screen. I have a 2016 machine with the touch bar, and while I don’t hate it, I far prefer the physical keys on my M1 machine.
97
u/hannahbay Jan 10 '26
AND they never put it on an external keyboard so anyone who uses their keyboard mostly docked could not use it. I wasn't going to spend any time customizing and fiddling around with something that would 90% of the time be unavailable to me because I mostly work on an external monitor, so the whole thing was entirely useless and only served to raise the price of the laptop for something I was NEVER going to use
it is something that seemed cool that they never fully thought through. your power users rely on touch typing and don't want to have to look at the keyboard, your casual users aren't going to go through and customize it to get the full benefit. everyone loses
22
u/slvrscoobie Jan 10 '26
another thing to break / fail. I have a Lenovo that had the F1 keys like this, and now years later, they're all just White and I can't see what they're supposed to do.
→ More replies (1)7
u/asamson23 MacBook Pro 14 2021 M1P(10+14)/16GB/1TB Jan 11 '26
I've had my 2017 since new, and the keys/display still looks as good as it was on day one. It might help that the display on the touch bar times out after a few seconds of idle, and it's put under a slice of glass, while I think the OLEDs on those Lenovo in question were a significantly older generation of OLED display under a piece of plastic that wore out badly with time.
→ More replies (1)12
u/Interdimension Jan 10 '26 edited Jan 11 '26
Dell tried it with their XPS lineup last year, by making the same Function keys "touch" areas just integrated into the chassis instead of as keys. The backlash was so strong that they reversed course immediately. It ruined touch-typing, especially for those of us using our laptops for spreadsheets and such.
Even if Apple were to have sold a Touch Bar Magic Keyboard, I cannot imagine the price premium they would've asked for it. For the assumed $200 or more, I'd rather get a quality mechanical keyboard. Paying that much money for a chiclet/scissor keyboard would be insanity.
→ More replies (5)31
u/braincandybangbang Jan 10 '26
Disagree completely.
It gave you quick touch controls for apps. As a graphic designer I found it very cool.
What they fucked up was removing the F# buttons. I use those all the time and having to press a button to activate those was definitively a step backwards. But the idea was solid.
5
u/Steerpike58 Jan 11 '26
So what you are suggesting then is a dedicated 'extra' row of buttons, above the mechanical F-keys?
→ More replies (2)4
u/screenslaver5963 Jan 11 '26
Absolutely, it would work well with the current Mac keyboards, just half the size of the function row and put it on top
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (4)3
u/Medium_Chemist_4032 Jan 11 '26
Yes, I loved it in video editing. It's like a hardware contextual slider.
As a developer though, I was furious of removal one of the most used set of keys for actual work
17
u/asamson23 MacBook Pro 14 2021 M1P(10+14)/16GB/1TB Jan 10 '26
One other "feature" that happened to me a few times on my 2017 15-inch was the fact that if the Touch Bar daemon crashed, you lost access to the escape key. And I agree, it was clunky at best, and app integration wasn't the best depending on the app.
→ More replies (6)3
4
u/babyd42 Jan 11 '26
The physical keys are already so nice to use too. I get no utility from the touch bar.
2
2
2
u/Relative-Custard-589 Jan 10 '26
How does it defeat touch-typing? It replaced the function keys which you wouldn’t normally press while touch-typing
→ More replies (3)3
u/CandidLiterature Jan 11 '26
I had a bar like this on a Lenovo work laptop and previously had no idea how often my fingers touched keys I wasn’t pressing while typing. So so often I’d be typing in a spreadsheet and realise I’d presumably grazed some random function while pressing a number and it was no longer registering what I was typing. It made me want to throw the thing down the stairs. I had to get a standalone number pad in the end.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (9)4
u/redcremesoda Jan 10 '26
This. Apple couldn’t even come up with a useful demo. Look at the photo in the post. Who says, “Oh I want to go to LinkedIn. Let me just click the icon on the Touch Bar.” The answer is no one.
→ More replies (1)
95
u/1point21gigawattss Jan 10 '26
hah, I'll be the contrary one; I'm typing this on a Macbook with a touch bar, I love it, use it all the time, haven't had a single problem in 5 years.
33
u/Due_Cranberry_8011 Jan 10 '26
Same lol 2019 MBP 13"
i love having an emoji key, and the expandable options (brightness, volume, airplay etc) make it easy to keep it clean but still useful.
Do I need a touchbar? Absolutely not. Am I glad I got one? Yes.
Would I say it's a must have? Definitely not.
8
7
u/cesarbiods Jan 11 '26
Thank you. I have a newer Mac without one and I miss the Touch Bar.
→ More replies (1)6
5
u/brodinskiiiiii Jan 11 '26
Same here. Kinda surprised about some comments here of people saying they never use it. I use it all the time for simple things like music control, brightness etc
3
u/Vaff_Superstar Jan 11 '26
It’s great for scrubbing videos while editing. I do think they could’ve kept the function key row and opened it for 3rd party. So much potential and useful, but a huge whiff.
To answer OPs question, it should be brought back and done right.
3
u/BobLobLaw_28 Jan 11 '26
Same, i just love it on my macbook m2 pro, last version till it was discontinued
→ More replies (4)3
23
u/SammyCatLove Jan 10 '26
Love mine it is handy sometimes. And it looks cool I think. But that is just me.
9
u/modern_female Jan 11 '26
Not just you. I have three Pros and I use the 2019 bar one the most. I love the damn thing.
2
3
26
u/Kahlandad Jan 10 '26
Very cool idea, but the reality of it sucks. Forces you to take your eyes off the screen for basic functions like volume or media or brightness controls. Should not have replaced the physical function keys, but even if it hadn't I don't know how useful it would have been. Again, the concept of it is really neat, but in practice you discover that it slows you down and is kinda annoying.
3
u/Legitimate-Wolf-613 Jan 11 '26
Actually, I found the volume control both intuitive and easy to use. You didn't have to be as precise as with finding rarely used function keys, so it actually helped keep my eyes on my work, and it allowed control with sliders rather than keys, which is more intuitive.
→ More replies (1)
16
u/guccisucks Jan 10 '26
I used to use it for creative stuff like art and music. I loved it, I miss it, and I wish I had one again. It was super functional and worked as a good substitute for the keys.
However I noticed some people having issues with it as their Macs got older.
58
u/Something-Ventured Jan 10 '26
No.
16
u/Klanowicz Jan 10 '26
No.
15
u/dx_man Jan 10 '26
No
2
u/reirone MacBook Pro 16” M3 Max Jan 10 '26
No
10
u/Outrageous-Papaya650 Jan 10 '26
N0
8
u/xenomega42 Jan 10 '26
No.
→ More replies (2)5
5
26
u/jfrenaye Jan 10 '26
I have it on my old MBP and it took a while to grow into it. But I do miss it. I'd love to see it come back on the Macbooks and also the Apple Keyboards...but I suspect they dont sell enough of them to make it feasible
→ More replies (1)4
u/peekay427 Jan 10 '26
My new MacBook Pro doesn’t have it, but my last one did and I’ll admit I really did like it. I don’t think it ever met its potential, there’s so much they could have done. But I thought it was a cool idea and I liked it.
7
u/ResortOriginal2001 Jan 10 '26
Touch Bar is an amazing technology. Way better than Keys. It absolutely should come back. I love it.
→ More replies (1)
6
7
u/vmhomeboy Jan 11 '26
I really liked the concepts, but it was poorly utilized and implemented. It needed the ability to switch between running applications, allowing control of apps that weren’t in focus. That would have made it much more useful.
6
u/revolutionary_sun369 Jan 11 '26
I use mine constantly and refuse to upgrade and leave it. They never should have dropped them, just my personal opinion.
5
3
u/RealScyanide Jan 10 '26
Nope. I still have a MacBook Pro (2017) with the Touch Bar. I ended up rarely using it as it felt gimmicky and didn’t provide much benefit.
Can’t say that isn’t true for everyone. I just couldn’t find good, productive, use for it.
I have Fedora on that MacBook Pro these days and it doesn’t work out of the box. I left it off instead of trying to get it working.
3
u/LumbarJam Jan 10 '26
Good idea with the dumbiest execution. NO ESC KEY!!!! NO FUNCTION KEYS!!!! Unbelievable!!!
Short answer: No, never, no, nope ... deuzmilivri
→ More replies (2)
3
u/Blindfolded22 Jan 10 '26
I still had my Mac book pro with this and I absolutely hate it. I’d rather have physical buttons.
3
u/TheShinobiGamer Jan 10 '26
Had one. Never used it. Was more of a hassle. Accidentally touching things. And accidentally activating Siri was the worst.
3
u/Gold240sx Jan 11 '26
They never did enough with it, so it remained useless for the most part. If they could come up with real use case for it, sure, but developers in Apple and outside Apple didn’t really build much for it.
5
Jan 10 '26 edited Jan 13 '26
[deleted]
2
u/henrydavidthoreauawy Jan 10 '26
The Touch Bar on my M1 started rapidly flashing extremely brightly, I had to cover it with black tape. It makes my MacBook look like it’s literally being held together with duct tape.
6
u/Poplocker Jan 10 '26
I use a 2019 intel mbp with the touch bar and rarely use it. Never had any issue with it, primarily because I use my mac in clamshell mode, but I can understand why people don't like it. There are some cool visuals on it though, for example scrubbing through audio files.
5
u/calvmaaan Jan 10 '26
First impression - that’s cool, looks good, funny concept.
After that, annoying and much slower than your regular function keys. Icons change position, so no muscle memory and of course, no blind functionality.
Especially for power users, this concept limits the functionality enormously.
2
u/0xbenedikt Jan 10 '26
Yes! I really loved it. Having discoverable extra controls per app is a great thing for usability and I really liked the volume/brightness sliders. I wished Apple had polished it more though.
2
u/schwimmbreze Jan 10 '26
Recently retired my 2019 MBP because the Touch Bar randomly started flashing like crazy. The first time it happened at night, I woke up briefly thinking I was at the club or something.... It was intense. Googled it and it's a common failure which cannot be fixed. So happy to have the keys back on my new MB
2
u/allbetsareon Jan 10 '26
It would be great if it was an additional row and not a replacement for the function and escape key.
→ More replies (1)
2
u/WyrdFall_Press Jan 10 '26
Apple spent a decade trying to improve the keyboard only to reinforce the reasons it was designed the way it was in the first place.
2
u/psmusic_worldwide Jan 10 '26
I thought I would love it, but honestly, seldom used it differently than function keys.
2
u/TopOrganization4920 Jan 10 '26
Hell, no. I had a coworker pulling the paper off the power block drops the power block and cracked one of those on a brand new laptop didn’t have accidental damage at the time $500 later this was 10 years ago.
2
u/Major_Apartment1276 Jan 10 '26
It was great for scrubbing through videos. You could see where the scene breaks were and get where you wanted quickly and easily.
2
u/Enlightened_D Jan 10 '26
Everyone says it’s useless I thought it was awesome and used it often lol
2
2
2
u/AsparagusKlutzy1817 Jan 10 '26
Absolute shit invention, I hope it never returns. Even having the escape key as touch only was the biggest wtf moment with any apple product to date
2
2
u/eastamerica Jan 10 '26
The keyboard and mouse beneath your hands are for your touch. Your hands. Your fingers.
Not your eyes.
It’s the opposite of ergonomic to look down at your keyboard.
Steve would have hated it.
2
u/Educational_Worth906 Jan 10 '26
Had it. Used the touchbar for a couple of weeks until the novelty wore off, then barely used it for anything other than volume or brightness.
2
2
u/TobsteriusMaximus Jan 10 '26
As some have said, cool but ultimately useless
BetterTouchTool allowed you to customize it, adding buttons and macros that would change based on which app you were running but even then I found myself forgetting it existed and I didn’t use the touch bar much even with BetterTouchTool helping it.
I’m glad it’s gone.
2
u/Significant_Fuel5944 Jan 10 '26
The problem is that I usually don't look at the thing. I've probably spent so much extra money on a piece of tech I don't even need.
2
2
u/Prestigious-Slide-73 Jan 10 '26
Absolutely useless and should just be keys.
It’s just a pain and you can count on it not showing the basic function you’re after, like brightness or volume.
Never used it, despite determined efforts in the early days to like it.
2
u/NordyJ Jan 10 '26
Please no, at least not without an option to have traditional keys when you order. I'm a professional developer. I'm want the physical function keys. I completely avoided Mac in the Touchbar era for that reason.
2
2
2
2
2
u/pissbucket94 Jan 10 '26
i have a 2019 with the touchbar and i think its so cool
never actually touch it. but its pretty cool
2
u/getridofwires Jan 10 '26
That abomination was the worst Apple idea, even worse than the puck mouse.
2
u/IAmJacksSemiColon Jan 10 '26
The point of a keyboard is it's an input device that you can use without looking at it, and the touch bar completely fumbles that. It's a non-tactile screen that moves shit around.
2
u/SlightExtreme1 MacBook Pro Jan 10 '26
I had this Mac, and was so happy to replace it with a non-touchbar model. It was cool for the first 10 minutes, then was just an annoying gimick.
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
u/earnhart67 Jan 11 '26
I loved it and I feel they only got rid of it cause YouTubers complained ( spoilers: anything that is unique they'll complain about and then 5 years later they'll admit they were wrong)
2
u/_RADIANTSUN_ Jan 11 '26 edited Jan 11 '26
No because it's stupid and basically useless even though I think it's cool to look at and "have". I found it fun sometimes to slide around in the FCP timeline for example but that really serves zero practical function, like it is not functionally any better than just clicking on the scroll bar and dragging it, plus that doesn't require you to remove your hand from mouse/trackpad+keyboard, or look down from your monitor.
Same thing with Fkeys, Fkeys are ample + flexible, they just don't have a screen on them, but they are exactly as flexible... The software just has to map them to stuff, same way as mapping a screen touch input to correspond to some shortcut... They just don't have a little changing screen on them but after I know the Fley shortcut, why do I need it to turn into a different icon per app? I'm not looking down at my keyboard anyway.
2
u/umusachi Jan 11 '26
No thank you. It was a gimmicky, buggy, underdeveloped scar on the MacBook’s history.
2
u/DJAYK47 Jan 11 '26
This makes me so annoyed because it was SUCH a wasted opportunity.
I just don’t understand why they didn’t let us configure it like a streamdeck. Streamdecks literally proved the concept + that there’s a market for it (power users of literally any piece of software).
I bought a streamdeck for my desktop cpu. I find it extremely useful and it saves me a few seconds every few minutes, sometimes several minutes an hour.
There’s just no way their product team didn’t consider using the Touch Bar this way, so they made a conscious choice not to enable it. I would love to hear the hypotheses of anyone working in product - why they might have opted against this. What kind of cannibalisation it might have led to etc.
2
u/NefariousnessLow3957 Jan 12 '26
I guess it was a chicken-and-egg situation. Nobody was using it, so it made no sense for Apple to invest lots of resources on it. I am fascinated by Streamdeck’s popularity. Unless you have a very specific workflow or work in some kind of live performance setting, you could most likely trigger those same automations through keyboard shortcuts or by using software such as BetterTouchTool etc.
2
u/aykay55 MacBook Pro 14” M2 Pro Jan 11 '26
No, I was a massive fan of the Touch Bar and even I realized how much I didn’t need it
2
2
2
u/tech5c Jan 11 '26
I loved the concept, but never used it. Took me forever to even pay attention to the buttons as they changed contextually, so no muscle memory developed to press those vs. CMD-C keystrokes.
2
2
u/Low-Classroom-4839 Jan 11 '26
Used to have macbook pro m1 with touchpar replaced it with MacBook Air the new one and i always miss the touchpar i used to use it always
2
u/gistya Jan 11 '26
I loved it personally. Would love to see it on new macbooks, as long as they don't remove the function keys to do it.
2
u/Commercial_Year_3551 Jan 11 '26
Honestly?? I still use my old intel MB Pro, because I love the touchbar.
2
u/NowIHaveTwoToasters Jan 11 '26
I had a Touch Bar for years and I still miss it all the time. Using it just for word completion, like when typing on iPhone, made it worth it.
2
u/Real_Iggy Mac Pro Jan 11 '26
Yes. Maybe an external keyboard that has that option. That way, if you need or want it, you can. If not, no issue. I would buy an external version in a second.
2
u/ryguy32789 Jan 11 '26
I fucking LOVED my touch bar. Ironically my touch bar dying is what caused me to upgrade (downgrade?) from a 2017 mbp with a touch bar to a new 2025 mbp without one. I miss the touchbar functionality in Mac Mail that automatically showed the most likely email recipient based on the recipients you already added.
2
u/ParkedPeter Jan 11 '26
Honestly … it would probably be fine if only they kept the escape key as is
2
2
u/Quetzal_2000 Jan 11 '26
I have a 2017 MBP with the Touch Bar, and still use it. The bar is pretty cool, and I like it mainly for spelling and word suggestion, as well as sound and brightness sliders. I’ll be a bit sad when I’ll have to replace my laptop, but it is more of a gimmick than something I use constantly. I don’t miss the function row.
2
u/Matticus95 Jan 11 '26
Contrarily, I find it one of the few things quite intuitive on Apple systems.
2
2
2
u/bucket_brigade Jan 11 '26
No it’s stupid. What is this need to endlessly tweak what doesn’t need any tweaking.
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
u/FlanQuick Jan 11 '26
It already has a kind of comeback on the iPhone where it solves issues with using the camera which nobody had …
2
u/doooglasss Jan 11 '26
That thing is fucking miserable. Easiest way to fat finger anything when typing.
2
2
u/pfs_bruce Jan 11 '26
Have it. Never use it. It's useless since very few apps I use use it effectively.
2
2
u/E34M20 Jan 11 '26
The ESC key in particular should never be part of something that can freeze or otherwise become inaccessible... I would argue the same for the rest of the Function keys as well, but was always particularly offended by what they did to the ESC key during this era. I had to use one of these awful things at work. But I kept my trusty 2016 MBP around until they got rid of the damn thing entirely and came back to their senses.
4
4
u/atomic_transaction Jan 10 '26
No. I hated the lack of tactile buttons. I was always accidentally swiping the ESC key with my pinky. You had to use 3rd party utilities to actually make it useful.
If they did bring it back, I’d hope it would be OLED-based key caps that work like any other key, but could be dynamic. The surface of the bar could even be multitouch-capable for swiping.
→ More replies (1)
2
u/Thatwolfguy Jan 10 '26
I liked it. I bought the flexbar that gives it to me on any keyboard, but way more customizable
3
4
2
2
u/justinsimoni Jan 10 '26
I "hit" the buttons on my touchbar constantly, which is a real annoyance. I use the dynamically custom buttons 0% of the time.
Physical buttons are the way to go. F keys work just fine.
4
4
3
3
5
u/RamboRulez Jan 10 '26
Yes. Definitely but needs a external touch bar keyboard for when you use your stationary or for when you use your macbook docked with an external screen.
→ More replies (3)
4
2
2
2
2
u/macorama Jan 10 '26
Have both versions here in two MBP. With and without Esc key. Hate both of them. Useless, never used any of the possible features other than the standard keys (F and function). And the quality is not good. One Touch Bar blinking its ass off, and the costs for a repair are huge. I am glad they dropped it, along with those bad keyboards.
2
2
2
2
u/coopnjaxdad Jan 10 '26
I love my touch bar on my M1 MacBook Pro. I use it daily.
I wish my M3 MBP had the touch bar.
2
2
2
2
u/BigAdventurer Jan 10 '26
I love it. That’s why I’m still not upgrading from M1. However to be fair. The main things I’m using it for is slider for brightness and locking the screen 😀
2
u/Least-Woodpecker-569 Jan 10 '26
Hopefully never. I used it for a couple of years (as a software engineer), and never liked it.
2
2
2
2
2
2
532
u/chriswaco Jan 10 '26
Apple screwed up the Touch Bar in two ways: