I'll start with a confession: it never bothered me that in 2016 Apple abandoned physical function keys on MacBook Pro. I didn’t use the F-series hotkeys when touch typing, I always lowered my eyes and looked so as not to miss the volume switch. And I use the Escape key (as it turns out) surprisingly rarely.

But here is the ability to display Additional information, seemed useful to me from the very beginning. However, the standard capabilities of the Touch Bar are limited: in fact, it is a list of buttons for performing actions in running program. So, several months after purchasing the MacBook Pro, I still haven't found a use for that under-screen touch strip.

When I realized that I wanted to expand the capabilities of the Touch Bar, I went to Google and came across a wonderful utility BetterTouchTool. It appeared long before the touch screen and allows you to create additional gestures for all input systems on Macs: keyboards, touchpads, mice - and even remote controls.

After the release of the new MacBook Pro, the creator of BetterTouchTool implemented a cool system for creating your own Touch Bar layouts. It is flexible and allows you to customize the small screen to suit your needs. At first I used the settings from vas3k for a long time, but recently I created my own layout, which I will talk about in this text. The file with my settings is duplicated at the end of the text.

My setup

When creating the layout, I wanted to make it easier to interact with multiple desktops and full-screen applications. Previously, I didn’t particularly use these features in Windows, Linux or macOS, but now I decided to enter 2019 with a new logic for working on a laptop.

On the left side of the Touch Bar there are buttons for switching desktops and applications:

• Main desktop. There is an email client (Spark), working with files, and other little things;
• Job. My work software is Slack, Trello, Sketch, a package from Adobe;
• Web. Everything is simple here, this is Safari in full screen;
• Communication. Separate screen with instant messengers. Using BetterTouchTool, I positioned them at the edges of the screen (by default, application windows in macOS do not “stick” to the edges of the display);
• News. I read a stream of new articles through the RSS reader Reeder 3 and Tweetbot;
• Music. I listen to music and podcasts through iTunes. I placed the name of the active track just to the right of the button to switch to the player.

On the right is service information: weather, date and time. I also put a display of the current keyboard layout there. I implemented it by issuing query results to the xkbswitch console utility. Alas, the script’s every second “jerking” actively consumes battery power, but I use a laptop (mostly) when connected to the network. If this bothers you, you can manually adjust the request rate from 0.5 to 2-3 times per second - and if you just need to be aware of the active layout, one request every 10-20 seconds is enough. Alternatively, you can disable this widget altogether.

The Control and Option keys are not left idle. They show two sets of buttons that launch different programs- when Control is pressed, system settings, terminal and activity monitor are displayed, and with Option I see a set useful programs, such as code editor CotEditor and Team Viewer.

To adjust speaker volume and screen brightness, BetterTouchTool has multi-touch gestures on the Touch Bar. I assigned two-finger swipe to adjust volume and three-finger swipe to adjust screen brightness. This is convenient, since you don’t need to allocate a specific place on the Touch Bar for them (it detects multi-touch gestures over its entire surface).

Other settings

While I was writing this text, I wanted to see how many characters it contains. Unfortunately, Notes in macOS (where I do all my writing) doesn't show these stats.

After some googling, I found free application, which provides a set of ready-made scripts for working with text - they are built into the “Services” system menu and are constantly available there. This application can also show statistics on a selected piece of text, and I realized that I could make an additional button in BetterTouchTool that would be visible only when “Notes” is open and display statistics on the selected piece of text.

Every post I write on the BeardyCast telegram channel goes through a printing press. This utility corrects punctuation and puts non-breaking spaces. There are several web services with typography; I use the online version of Lebedev’s “Typographer”. But jumping between notes and the browser, copying and pasting text back and forth is not the most effective solution. Moreover, the Lebedev studio service has a full-fledged API for connecting to third-party software.

After much searching, I discovered a script for Alfred (a fancy alternative to Spotlight search) that runs any selected text through Typograph and inserts an already edited version in its place. For this action, I also created an additional button in BTT, which appears on the TouchBar only when working with “Notes” and launches this script with one click.

In addition to the touchbar layout, I have a number of handy gestures and hotkeys that I use regularly:

• Escape "hangs up" by clicking on the upper left corner of the touchpad. The chicano works. Plus, there is tactile feedback, which is so lacking in the standard virtual “escape” in the Touch Bar;
• Switching songs in iTunes is a three-finger swipe left and right on the touchpad. The three-finger gesture up is responsible for playing and pausing;
• To lock the laptop, I rotate two fingers counterclockwise. It sounds strange, but in fact I got used to the gesture very quickly - it is similar to closing a lock.

And finally, the menu. I have a lot of different icons there. To somehow navigate among them, I used to put things in order through the Bartender 3 application, but in one of the latest beta versions of BetterTouchTool, it became possible to hide icons by double-clicking on the menu bar. Very simple system, and it works great.

Conclusion

I honestly think Apple could have (and should have) improved the Touch Bar. Moreover, over the three years of the Touch Bar's existence, Apple has hardly developed its software at all. Hopefully this will happen in a future version of macOS. Now, judging by reviews online, the main rejection was caused by the rejection of the physical Escape button - if to the right of the Touch Bar there is physical button with a Touch ID scanner, why can’t you put the same button on the left? I do not understand this.

However, for me personally, the touchpad above the keyboard was more than useful. Thanks to BetterTouchTool, I distributed actions and applications across the Touch Bar, and hid the Dock and menu bar.

I recommend visiting the BetterTouchTool website. There is a forum where you will find answers to most questions, as well as other awesome Touch Bar setups - for example, AquaTouch and GoldenChaos.

Apple knows how to promote new services and technologies when it truly believes in them, but the Touch Bar is still somewhat of an experiment.

Utilities like BetterTouchTool demonstrate just how powerful a touchpad over a keyboard can be, but somehow Apple doesn't think so. How else can you explain that the MacBook Pro does not have truly flexible personal settings for the Touch Bar? Inside macOS there is an entire scripting language called Apple Script, which allows you to meticulously customize the operation of the OS, but the Touch Bar has not become a “necessity” over the several years of its existence.