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I’ve found that the Touch Bar’s fundamental flaw is that it doesn’t handle unintended touches well (which sadly affects multiple Apple technologies, including m

I’ve found that the Touch Bar’s fundamental flaw is that it doesn’t handle unintended touches well (which sadly affects multiple Apple technologies, including my Watch and even the trackpad occasionally), and that is directly related to the fact that it has no raised elements. Furthermore, one of its main added features — the ability to do gestures that keys can’t do — just isn’t valuable. I haven’t seen a single example of something that was easier to do on the Touch Bar when I have a giant screen and trackpad/mouse already. I don’t need micro-scrubber interfaces or color sliders or Emoji bars, and the volume/brightness sliders are imprecise. Despite customizing the bar with BetterTouchTool, including “vibrate” feedback, I invariably found I had to remove more and more things from the bar over time. Any functions in the central part of the bar were invariably triggering by accident. It was just too distracting to have things randomly happening when my finger slid onto something that doesn’t feel like an active panel. Now, therefore, I have a Touch Bar with just a few things: a battery status indicator on the left end (near the thankfully-now-real Esc key), and the brightness/volume/mute on the right (near the wonderful Touch ID). And that’s it. It is literally 70% empty space now. This is ridiculous for something as complex and expense-adding as the Touch Bar. A complete failure of a technology.

dkdbejwi383 6y ago
> I’ve found that the Touch Bar’s fundamental flaw is that it doesn’t handle unintended touches well (which sadly affects multiple Apple technologies, including my Watch and even the trackpad occasionally), and that is directly related to the fact that it has no raised elements. It's the worst. I constantly hit mute instesd of backspace. Changing the volume or brightness is a complete pain now. It used to be just tap the key a couple of times and that was it. I would do it as a reflex without interrupting the work I was doing. Now I have to look at where the 'button' is, and then tap and slide. Completely awful.
- hilti 6y ago
  It's easy to change this behaviour Open the System Preferences app. Select the Keyboard option (third row, sixth item) On the first tab (also called Keyboard), locate the dropdown for "Touch Bar shows" and choose "Expanded Control Strip".
  - makecheck 6y ago
    There are problems with that, too: - Their “Customize Control Strip” sheet provides an arbitrary subset of volume buttons, which don’t include the ones I want. (Specifically, separate volume buttons and not “button that shows slider first”.) - Previously I was very accustomed to feeling for the volume buttons, and even using modifier keys for very fine-grained volume changes. With default Touch Bar keys, this is basically impossible. It is sort-of-OK with BetterTouchTool customization but it took me awhile to find a combination that I liked. And, still not as good as the original volume/modifier keys.
  - dkdbejwi383 6y ago
    This doesn't change that I have to look for the on screen buttons and can't just reflexively change the volume while doing something else. Changing the volume or brightness or whatever now becomes a discete task that stops me doing what I was doing before. This * 10 over the course of a day adds up to lots of distractions ovet time.
whymauri 6y ago
My touch bar freezes every hour or so when changing volume. I then have to close the laptop, wait for a second, and then open the laptop again. It's awful.
- warent 6y ago
  This is the only thing that I don't like about the touch bar. It freezes every so often for me too. However, the fix is a lot easier for me. I just open spotlight search (CMD + Spacebar) and it fixes it.
  - whymauri 6y ago
    Wow! Just tried this and it works. Thank you so much.
- JadeNB 6y ago
  You can also kill the relevant process: `killall ControlStrip`. I haven't had the precise problem you describe, but this did often suffice to fix strange frozen touch-bar problems.
JadeNB 6y ago
> Despite customizing the bar with BetterTouchTool, including “vibrate” feedback, I invariably found I had to remove more and more things from the bar over time. Any functions in the central part of the bar were invariably triggering by accident. It was just too distracting to have things randomly happening when my finger slid onto something that doesn’t feel like an active panel. Is there any way to disable the fixed `esc`? I could just ignore the touch bar, except for that. It haunts my vim experience and my attempts to use full-screen (which `esc` exists by default), since apparently my left little finger tends to rest there without my realising (maybe because I'm a vimmer?).
- makecheck 6y ago
  BetterTouchTool can remove the “esc” (or any key) entirely but I don’t think there is a normal macOS way to do it.
mirkules 6y ago
You mentioned the volume/brightness sliders as being imprecise. I don’t have a MBP, but I noticed that touchscreen sliders are really difficult to use accurately. Whenever I slide to a value I wanted, lifting my finger inevitably moves the slider over just a little bit selecting an adjacent value (just by virtue of my finger not being lifted straight up). Is this the issue?
- makecheck 6y ago
  I’m sure I have had sliders mishave like that, too. Mostly I just don’t want a slider in the first place; I prefer feeling for the volume up/down keys and tweaking the volume bit by bit, sometimes using modifier keys for extra precision. It is incredibly easy to input “slightly louder” in the old way. It is unnecessarily hard to input “slightly louder” with a wonky touch slider. And, at times I have blown up the speaker by touching it the wrong way.
  - vkoskiv 6y ago
    You can just flick left/right on the volume/brightness icons to adjust a single increment, without having to bring out the slider. This isn't documented anywhere, it's another one of those hidden features you just have to learn.

dkdbejwi383 6y ago

> I’ve found that the Touch Bar’s fundamental flaw is that it doesn’t handle unintended touches well (which sadly affects multiple Apple technologies, including my Watch and even the trackpad occasionally), and that is directly related to the fact that it has no raised elements. It's the worst. I constantly hit mute instesd of backspace. Changing the volume or brightness is a complete pain now. It used to be just tap the key a couple of times and that was it. I would do it as a reflex without interrupting the work I was doing. Now I have to look at where the 'button' is, and then tap and slide. Completely awful.

hilti 6y ago
It's easy to change this behaviour Open the System Preferences app. Select the Keyboard option (third row, sixth item) On the first tab (also called Keyboard), locate the dropdown for "Touch Bar shows" and choose "Expanded Control Strip".
- makecheck 6y ago
  There are problems with that, too: - Their “Customize Control Strip” sheet provides an arbitrary subset of volume buttons, which don’t include the ones I want. (Specifically, separate volume buttons and not “button that shows slider first”.) - Previously I was very accustomed to feeling for the volume buttons, and even using modifier keys for very fine-grained volume changes. With default Touch Bar keys, this is basically impossible. It is sort-of-OK with BetterTouchTool customization but it took me awhile to find a combination that I liked. And, still not as good as the original volume/modifier keys.
- dkdbejwi383 6y ago
  This doesn't change that I have to look for the on screen buttons and can't just reflexively change the volume while doing something else. Changing the volume or brightness or whatever now becomes a discete task that stops me doing what I was doing before. This * 10 over the course of a day adds up to lots of distractions ovet time.

whymauri 6y ago

My touch bar freezes every hour or so when changing volume. I then have to close the laptop, wait for a second, and then open the laptop again. It's awful.

warent 6y ago
This is the only thing that I don't like about the touch bar. It freezes every so often for me too. However, the fix is a lot easier for me. I just open spotlight search (CMD + Spacebar) and it fixes it.
- whymauri 6y ago
  Wow! Just tried this and it works. Thank you so much.
JadeNB 6y ago
You can also kill the relevant process: `killall ControlStrip`. I haven't had the precise problem you describe, but this did often suffice to fix strange frozen touch-bar problems.

JadeNB 6y ago

> Despite customizing the bar with BetterTouchTool, including “vibrate” feedback, I invariably found I had to remove more and more things from the bar over time. Any functions in the central part of the bar were invariably triggering by accident. It was just too distracting to have things randomly happening when my finger slid onto something that doesn’t feel like an active panel. Is there any way to disable the fixed `esc`? I could just ignore the touch bar, except for that. It haunts my vim experience and my attempts to use full-screen (which `esc` exists by default), since apparently my left little finger tends to rest there without my realising (maybe because I'm a vimmer?).

makecheck 6y ago
BetterTouchTool can remove the “esc” (or any key) entirely but I don’t think there is a normal macOS way to do it.

mirkules 6y ago

You mentioned the volume/brightness sliders as being imprecise. I don’t have a MBP, but I noticed that touchscreen sliders are really difficult to use accurately. Whenever I slide to a value I wanted, lifting my finger inevitably moves the slider over just a little bit selecting an adjacent value (just by virtue of my finger not being lifted straight up). Is this the issue?

makecheck 6y ago
I’m sure I have had sliders mishave like that, too. Mostly I just don’t want a slider in the first place; I prefer feeling for the volume up/down keys and tweaking the volume bit by bit, sometimes using modifier keys for extra precision. It is incredibly easy to input “slightly louder” in the old way. It is unnecessarily hard to input “slightly louder” with a wonky touch slider. And, at times I have blown up the speaker by touching it the wrong way.
- vkoskiv 6y ago
  You can just flick left/right on the volume/brightness icons to adjust a single increment, without having to bring out the slider. This isn't documented anywhere, it's another one of those hidden features you just have to learn.