Completely shut down Touch Bar on Pro 13"

[Jildert]

I'm one of the unlucky souls who bought a Macbook Pro 13" in 2017. Next to the well-known issue of the sticky keyboard, six months ago my Touch Bar started blinking white like a Christmas Tree. A quarter of the Touch Bar is affected, and utterly useless. Beside that, it's annoying as hell.

Unfortunately, it's gonna cost me 700 euros to replace (new top case). I don't want to pay that for a laptop I bought for 2000 euros, merely 3,5 years ago.

I'm not using the Touch Bar, so I'm looking for a way to shut it down completely. I know there are some tweaks to lock it, alter the icons etc, but I'm not interested in that. I want to shut it down entirely, completely blacken it out.

So now for my question: is there any way to do that?

 

[c0ppo]

Can't help you with shutting down TB.
But in your case, I would abuse the hell out of that keyboard. They fail quite easily. Just pound on it a few days or so.
That way Apple will replace the keyboard, battery, trackpad and your failing touchbar.

Since Apple likes to glue everything together, well, make use of it.

 

[Jildert]

Can't help you with shutting down TB.
But in your case, I would abuse the hell out of that keyboard. They fail quite easily. Just pound on it a few days or so.
That way Apple will replace the keyboard, battery, trackpad and your failing touchbar.

Since Apple likes to glue everything together, well, make use of it.

Well, I send it for repairs hoping just that, but they send me back a bill of 700e to replace the top case... Easy solution for them of course. But I'm not about to pay 700 to fix a laptop that was expensive to begin with.

So I replied that I'm eligible for the repair program for (at least) the keyboard, and now I'm waiting for an answer.

Still, as a backup plan, I would like to know how to shut down the Touch Bar. Beside that, the MBP works fine, it's just the blinking that annoys the hell out of me.

 

[mcpix]

If you've got a sticky keyboard, you should get a top case replacement as part of the butterfly keyboard repair program.That's what Apple did for me on my 2017. My Applecare+ was still in effect, but they are supposed to repair it either way. Are you working with Apple directly? I've found that I always get much better service working with Apple directly than working with 3rd party "authorized repair" facilities.