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Comment by dreamcompiler | Hacker News Reader

The "real" Escape key is essential. I'm using a new 16" MBP at work and it's quite nice, but without the real Escape key I'd probably be cursing the computer every day. I thought I'd hate the touchbar, but I actually thought it was cute -- for about an hour. Then I realized it was just a useless gimmick and reset it to "Expanded Control Strip" which is Apple's euphemism for "Make the touchbar look and act just like the old Mac function keys."

I did add the "Do Not Disturb" key to the touchbar; it's nice to have one-button access to that function when I need to get work done without distractions.

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The last time this came up on HN (that I read) someone recommended Pock, so I'll pass on that recommendation.

https://pock.dev

This takes the touchbar from 'annoying' to 'ok this is kind of useful actually', for me at least. I spend a lot of time on a keyboard + trackball combo, but keep my laptop propped a bit for TouchID, zooming, and one or two other useful idioms.

I've been hiding the Dock for a solid decade, and it's a more useful default than, say, the illegible window snapshots Safari insists on offering over the obvious choice of favicon + a few letters of the title.

It's baffling to me that none of Chrome, Firefox, nor Safari, offer that interface for the touchbar on Mac.

Thank you for this post. This seems incredibly useful for casual settings when you're on another computer and you want to pull up another app.

I tried out pock.dev a while ago, but didn't really find it useful. I just rarely use my dock, it's been hidden for years. I open almost everything with spotlight (Or Alfred a few years ago), and switching is just cmd + tab.

I do find the Touch Bar useful for music controls and scrubbing through a video, but that's about it.

The touchbar is not useless - that is an opinion I do not share.

I do not use the Fn keys in MacOS - and having media controls, screen lock, and other data in the touchbar makes more sense for me. It was and is an experiment in user behavior and UI. Some like it, some don't. I'm not committed to it, but I don't want the HN bubble to think their "bad touchbar" is the only opinion.

I can see it can be, and it actually is useful for many users, but it's not for me, and many others share the same opinion. So having an option not to get the touch bar is important for us.

I hear you, but that gets to the core of Apple design: They don't have a million options for people.

Some want headphone jack, many don't. Some like the butterfly keys, many don't. Touchbar, USB-A, Magsafe, Touch ID, small OLED form factor... they pick a side and go.

> I did add the "Do Not Disturb" key to the touchbar; it's nice to have one-button access

Not quite one button, but option- clicking the notifications icon at the far right of the menu bar will also enable do not disturb

Learned that after I installed the button on the touchbar but yeah, good point.

The touchbar is for sure a gimmick, but I found some use for it in PyCharm. There’s a lot of commands you can run from the menubar in pycharm so its kinda useful to skip a complicated hotkey and just add it to the touchbar. Maybe in video editing programs theres some use?

I imagine it might be more useful for content creation than others. Then again, maybe not.

I was forced to remove several buttons from the touch bar, because when I go to type numbers I will occasionally brush the bar with my fingertips, interrupting my workflow as something random suddenly pops up.

I hate the Touch Bar.

I got my first touchbar enabled MacBook this month after holding out as long as I could and I find I accidentally hit it all the time when browsing the web.

I have the 2016 MBP, and the digital escape key makes me angry almost every single day, there's just no feedback whatsoever. And every so often I accidentally "press" it. Other than that, the only useful feature is music controls.

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