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by chrisseaton 2552 days ago
> devote time to learning Touch Bar

How complicated do you think it is that you need to spend time learning it?

3 comments

Not complicated at all, it just requires an open mindset.

Some tips:

Customise it to your liking in the keyboard pref pane.

You can press-and-drag on volume and brightness buttons of the collapsed control strip. No need to tap then slide.

You can create services (now Quick Action) in Automator and they show up with the Show Quick Actions setting set. Since services can be contextual (input+app) you can get creative and do some whacky stuff in there. I have contextless Safari and Terminal there to pop up new windows whatever the focused app is.

What I CAN NOT do, however, is move the 'ESC' key (or any, really) all the way to the left. There's always a 'Touch ID'-size spacer on the left of the Touch Bar.
That spacer still activates the 'ESC' key
That's correct. I am currently considering upgrading from my 13" 2013 Macbook Air to a 15" 2019 Macbook Pro (I want it for the IPS/bigger display) and I noticed this while I was testing it at Bestbuy.

Personally, if I make the purchase, I will probably just remap the Caps Lock key to ESC - assuming I can remove ESC from the Touch Bar.

The one thing I didn't care for is that the Touch Bar display can time out. I would personally prefer that it stay on - or at least have the option of it staying on.

Did a quick test, seems like it times out after 2min of system idle time, unrelated to display timeout (caffeinate -d doesn't prevent it) or actual idle system state (caffeinated -I doesn't either), and even on AC power (to prevent OLED burn in?)

The timeout implementation could definitely be improved. In 6 months I've hat that computer I've never had it be a problem or even found it annoying in any way though.

it sort of does. pressing in the 'middle' of the space, yeah, but not tapping the edge, like I used to do with the physical key.
Indeed the ESC button is much wider than it appears to be.
After 4 weeks with a touchbar macbook I’m still trying to unlearn “finger rests near escape key”, mostly because I only use the built in keyboard occasionally and that’s where that finger belongs.
It's also about unlearning one's previous workflows.