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Comment by rorykoehler | Hacker News Reader

I went from late 2013 13 inch to the 2016 16 inch (maxed everything but the graphics). I also hate the touchbar. Things like volume control that used to be a tap away are now hidden in sub screens. You can switch it to only function keys but they are missing the icons for volume etc and you can't touch feel where the buttons are so I have left it in full touchbar mode. Some functions of it are actually quite cool but it should exist as well as the function keys not instead of. I haven't had any of the issues described anywhere. Mine works flawlessly. Very very happy with the machine overall. A huge improvement on the 2013 mbp i came from which i agree was an excellent machine.

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You can tweak the touch bar to put e.g. volume control on the 'home screen' if you prefer; it's hard to find though, it's under Keyboard, then the Customize Control Strip button at the bottom.

I just checked. Unless I'm missing something there is no simple volume control like on the physical keyboard? I already have the volume button on my touchbar home screen however tapping it opens a slider. I don't want or need a slider and have to do a tap and then slide to get the volume down whilst before it was one press of a button. This usually requires me to look away form what I'm doing. It's definitely a step back in terms of UX. It was perfect before the touchbar.

Thanks for pointing that feature out though. Have replaced Siri with the play button :)

Edit: Just playing around with this a bit more I noticed the expanded view now has all the normal icons. Either I missed it before or I changed something. Is there a way to make the expanded view the default?

You can tap-hold-slide to adjust across the whole range, rather than tapping then hunting for the slider. You can also set the touch bar to show an expanded control strip by default (which includes a volume up/volume down/mute triple) if you want.

The tap and hold works well. I guess I will settle on expanded view with fn key for app controls. Probably the best for my usecase.

I have the problem where the TouchBar goes blank and it's not even detected by the system any longer (System Preferences - Keyboard) and I have to reboot to get the controls back.

Tweaks like Goldenchaos can help with usability. Volume control becomes a 2-finger slide on the touchbar. It’s not ideal, but it’s certainly better than nothing.

For things like volume control and brightness, you don't have to treat it as a two step process, you can simply press on the volume button, for example, and immediately slide to adjust without moving your finger over to the slider.

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