A Beginner's Guide To the MacBook Pro Touch Bar

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's look at the basics of using the Touch Bar on the MacBook Pro.

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So if you've recently bought a Mac Pro you have a Touch Bar above the keyboard. The Touch Bar is a narrow touch screen on the top of your keyboard that allows you to press buttons that change depending upon what you're doing on your Mac. For Instance, here I am using the Finder. If I look over here to the Touch Bar you could see I've got various controls there related to the Finder. For instance I could touch right here and now I can change the view and I can sort. I also have controls on the right here and I can expand these by clicking here. These look like the typical controls you would have seen on the keys at the top of the keyboard where the Touch Bar is now. In addition to that I can hold the physical fn on my keyboard and it changes to show the F keys which are used by some apps to allow you to perform special functions and have some shortcuts.

The thing about the Touch Bar is it is heavily customizable and I'm talking about just with the built-in system software. Nothing extra added. To start customizing the Touch Bar to fit your needs first go to System Preferences and there go to Keyboard. Then look under the Keyboard tab here for Touch Bar shows and you have five different options. The first is App Controls which means it will change depending upon which app you're using. We will look at some of the examples in a minute. 

Now in addition to that you can decide whether or not you want the Control Strip to be there. The Control Strip is the part to the right side and it usually shows you Volume Controls and a Brightness control. You can tap here and expand it to see all of the controls in the Control Strip. Now if you turn that off that goes away. Now you can change this to be Expanded Control Strip by default. When you do that notice the option to have Control Strip there is gone because your default is the entire Control Strip. So you'll see this no matter which app you're using.

You could also have the F keys be the default. So if say you're using an app that makes extensive use of the F keys and that's what you primarily do on your Mac you'll want to choose this so the F keys are always there by default.

The next option is Quick Actions. So these use the Quick Actions that you can create in Automator or add through various apps. Then after that you've got Spaces control. So if you make extensive use of Mission Control and different desk tops and full screen apps then this option might be for you because it will show you all of your different desktops and allow you to switch to them just by touching on the Touch Bar.

Now whichever one of these you choose you can choose what happens if you press the fn key. It will toggle between what the main set of controls are and another set. So you can see there are only four options here because the one you've chosen is missing because it's shown by default. So, for instance, I could  have App Controls be the default and the F keys be what happens when I press the fn key. Or maybe I could do something like have Spaces showing when I press the fn key. So it's up to you to which one is the primary one that is shown and which one is the alternate one that is shown when you hold the fn key.

In addition to this you can customize the control strip with this button here. So click that and now you could see I've got these controls here. I can drag and drop them to the bottom of the screen and they'll add to the Touch Bar. So, for instance, if I wanted Do Not Disturb to be on the Control I can drag that down and it will add. Now while I have this customize control on I can tap here and expand this and I can move things around. For instance I can move Brightness control to the right or the Volume controls to the left to get it just like I want. I can also rearrange these. If I want something to be in the Expanded Control Strip I simply expand it and now I drag it down there and it will add itself to the Expanded Control Strip.

So you have two different modes. The Control Strip on the right side and the Expanded Control Strip and you can customize them both. So notice you can also drag the default set down. So I can reset by dragging the default set down. Let's go and do that for the small Control Strip as well. That's how you can easily reset it and customize it to exactly what you need. So think about which of these controls you use most often and put those in the Control Strip instead of the defaults if you like.

Now I have it set to show the App Controls with the Control Strip on. So let's look at what happens if I go to different apps. Here I am in the Finder and I have a control here to show views. I can tap that and I can have the different views and I can switch between those. I could also Sort By and choose one of these. I can tap and scroll along here to choose different ones. So if what you want is hidden to the right you can always scroll along. The X button here acts as a back button to go back to the previous buttons that were there. Now that I have a file selected I can use Quick Look or Share or a Tag button here. Notice if I tap Share it comes up with all the different sharing options. I can tap this to go back. If I tap Tag I get the different tag options here and I can tap to go back.

But what happens if I switch to a different app? Let's switch to Music, for instance. Here I am in the Music app and you can see that I get a set of playback controls and also a scrubber that I can go back and forth to change my position in a song. In Pages I have controls that allow me to change the style so I can tap here and then change the style. I could also, since I'm in typing mode, I can use the suggestions here for word completion.This is the same as if you're typing on the iPhone or iPad. I can tap here to close that, if I like, and instead see controls for changing the Font styling. So I can make something Bold or change the color, or make something a bullet list.

In Numbers I get a different set of buttons. I have Format here and I can change the format. I can use AutoFill. I can tap here and insert a formula. I can change the styling here. Here I can tap there and change the Justification. So there's a lot I can do depending upon what I have selected. This is going to change based on my context. This is what I have when a cell is selected. If I tap here to select the entire table you could see I have controls for the table like adding columns and rows. If I were to create a shape and have that shape selected you could see here I have controls for that including opacity controls here. I could tap here to change the color. You could see I have these color chips here but I could also tap here to go deeper down into colors and change things like say RGB sliders and between red, green, and blue sliders to alter the color.

So there are similar set of controls for Keynote depending upon what you have selected. So I've got some text selected here. Here I've got a shape selected. You could see here if I'm in a presentation and I hit Play I've got controls here that allow me to navigate the slides in the presentation and jump to a particular slide. 

Some have some really interesting controls. For instance here in GarageBand I've got controls based on what I'm doing and I can tap here and change which controls I'm using. I can even go to a keyboard here and actually have a virtual keyboard that I could play in the Touch Bar. When you are reviewing photos in the Photos app you have this strip here where you can quickly move between all of your different photos. You can do things like Rotate, Enhance the photo, Favorite it. When you're in Edit mode you get things related to editing.So I can go down into say Color and from here I can make color adjustments that appear here in the Touch Bar. 

Now in some apps you can customize the Touch Bar. Here in the Finder I can go to View and I see Customize Touch Bar is one of the options. Now I can change things that appear in the Touch Bar in those App controls for the Finder. So, for instance, if I wanted to add a New Folder I can add that. I can add the Go To command there as well. I can also go in here and drag these around. If I want to get rid of one I just drag it off to the left. I can always drag the default set down at the bottom of the screen to reset the defaults. 

Mail also has its unique set of controls like an Archive button and a Move To button. In Mail you can also customize. So go to View, Customize Touch Bar, and there are different things here that you could add to the Touch Bar specific to Mail.

So these are the basics for using the Touch Bar. As you can see it is very customizable. You can set the Default controls for it. You can set alternate controls with the fn key. You can also customize the Control Strip and the different app buttons that will appear there. So to get it working just like you want it's going to take some time and you're going to have to pay attention to the customization options. But if you like keyboard shortcuts this really is the ultimate thing because you're basically adding keys to your keyboard and keys that look like the function that they perform. 

But like any software tool you really need to practice using it and get good at it to reap the benefits. Set aside some time and force yourself to start using the Touch Bar until it becomes a regular habit. That's how to get the most out of it.