I'm thinking of putting black tapw over my touchbar, because there is no way to turn it off or have it sleep until I wake it up with a tap. I dislike that it goes to sleep on a hard set timer and wakes us when i simply use the keyboard. Any ideas i how to hack this? Otherwise its return it or black tape.
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Black tape over the touch bar
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That's also my biggest gripe with the Touch Bar so far; that you cannot disable the aggressive 60-seconds dimming behavior. I'd like to have it on at all times, or at least have a significantly longer timer before it starts dimming.
You can try creating and running an AppleScript that regularly "taps" a key as described here in order to keep the TB awake. However, for me on a 2018 MacBook Pro, this won't work; from all I can say, it needs to be an actual physical input that keeps the TB awake, a software-sided keystroke from AppleScript won't do it. Since the comments over there indicate that it does work for some people, I can only imagine that either High Sierra or the 2018 MacBook Pros made some change about this dimming behavior and made it so that only inputs on the actual hardware will turn it on. If you have a MBP from before 2018 then it's possible that this method will work for you; otherwise probably not.
It baffles me that there is no option at all for this when a simple slider, just like the one for how long the display itself stays on without input, should be very easy to implement for Apple. The only reason I can think of is to counteract burn-in, but that doesn't stop Apple on the Apple Watches or newest iPhones from providing an option for how long the screen stays on either (and it's not like burn-in is much of a problem with Apple's OLED screens to begin with).
I support OP's request: if anyone has a workaround to prevent the Touch Bar from dimming, it would be greatly appreciated. Maybe is a hidden terminal command or something that I could not find.
You can try creating and running an AppleScript that regularly "taps" a key as described here in order to keep the TB awake. However, for me on a 2018 MacBook Pro, this won't work; from all I can say, it needs to be an actual physical input that keeps the TB awake, a software-sided keystroke from AppleScript won't do it. Since the comments over there indicate that it does work for some people, I can only imagine that either High Sierra or the 2018 MacBook Pros made some change about this dimming behavior and made it so that only inputs on the actual hardware will turn it on. If you have a MBP from before 2018 then it's possible that this method will work for you; otherwise probably not.
It baffles me that there is no option at all for this when a simple slider, just like the one for how long the display itself stays on without input, should be very easy to implement for Apple. The only reason I can think of is to counteract burn-in, but that doesn't stop Apple on the Apple Watches or newest iPhones from providing an option for how long the screen stays on either (and it's not like burn-in is much of a problem with Apple's OLED screens to begin with).
I support OP's request: if anyone has a workaround to prevent the Touch Bar from dimming, it would be greatly appreciated. Maybe is a hidden terminal command or something that I could not find.
I don’t completely disagree, but I’ll refer to what I wrote above:
Regardless, there should be an option for it. The Touch Bar can also stay on for 12 hours straight if you never take breaks longer than 1 minute from your MBP during this time, yet we haven‘t heard of any real burn-in cases after more than 2 years since the TB MacBook Pros originally launched. Even if „no dimming“ is too problematic as an option, at least there should be a slider to only dim it after 2, 3, 5, ... minutes instead of just 1.
I agree. If it is meant to replace real keys, it should function the same or better. Now there is no way to use it to lower the volume >1 minute after you used the computer last.
I also agree with your burn-in opinion. Although the layout changes during use, far left (ESC) and far right keys stay the same and burn-in should be obvious at least on the ESC key.
I also agree with your burn-in opinion. Although the layout changes during use, far left (ESC) and far right keys stay the same and burn-in should be obvious at least on the ESC key.
In the past when Apple removed a feature, it replaced it with something that supposed to be better, there are exceptions (I'm looking at you headphone jack/lightening connector), but in the case of the touchbar we lose more then what we gain imo.