Disabling Touch Bar when on LG UltraFine 5K Display

[EvryDayImShufln]

Hey all,

I'm curious if you know of a way to automatically disable the touch bar when using the MBP as a secondary display, and an UltraFine display as the primary. I see it on the side changing up as I type and switch between applications so it's a bit distracting and not all that useful honestly 😛 If it would just stay all black that'd be great. Not sure if this is possible but figured I'd ask.

 

[Sanpete]

I don't know of a way to disable the touch bar, but you can disable parts of it. Under system preferences > keyboard you can choose whether to show app controls or control strip or both, and you can remove items from the control strip by clicking on Customize Control Strip, moving the cursor to the bottom of the screen above the items, clicking and holding to move them upwards. Might be able to make it pretty bare.

 

[ManuCH]

I think the easiest thing you could do is go to System Preferences -> Keyboard, then set "Touch bar shows" to "Expanded control strip".

That way, the touch bar won't change all them time when switching between applications. It will only switch when pressing Fn.

 

[EvryDayImShufln]

That's good advice and a decent option though I do use it without the screen as well sometimes and would rather not have to switch between the two. Would be awesome to have a feature where this would turn on only when plugged to an external display, mainly because we (predictably) wouldn't be reaching for the Touch Bar when plugged in.