People who use their Touch Bar regularly, what do you use it most for?

[Hieveryone]

There's people who LOVE the Touch Bar and others who are not as impressed. I would like to use this feature more often, but was hoping to get some ideas as to HOW I could implement it into my daily life.

For those who love it and use it regularly, how do you use it and how did you integrate it into your work flow?

 

[jadraker]

I use it to play and pause music, volume control and pause VM in VMware Fusion.

 

[BoneHead001]

It’s a mini touch screen. I’m coming from an iPad Pro (which I sold) so it feels a bit like the iPad when using the MBP.

 

[Camarillo Brillo]

I use it to do the things that there were dedicated keys for before the touchbar, like volume and brightness controls. The touchbar is the notch of the MacBook Pro.

 

[Hieveryone]

It’s a mini touch screen. I’m coming from an iPad Pro (which I sold) so it feels a bit like the iPad when using the MBP.

Can you tell me how you use it though?

I also use to for the basic function keys, like volume, but was hoping to use it more for other things

 

[New_Mac_Smell]

Honestly it is quite useful for Emoji's. Other than that, volume / music controls - I know it has specific app dependant controls that have been nice whenever I've looked down, but I'm busy looking at the screen so never notice.

 

[Camarillo Brillo]

Can you tell me how you use it though?

I also use to for the basic function keys, like volume, but was hoping to use it more for other things

Nope, that’s it, it’s just a gimmick.

 

[Rogo117]

I actually like having the Touch Bar, especially after starting to use Better Touch Tool for it. For example, in MS Teams, I've created some shortcuts for the mute/unmute button, and other shortcuts. Also using it for certain apps that require an insert key or other function keys.

I mainly use it for brightness, mute and volume. But I also enjoy using it for Mail shortcuts, but I wish Outlook would update and allow customization of it.

 

[Steve686]

I love having a one touch custom sleep button. I hate closing the lid to sleep.

Also Final Cut Pro is nice to use with the Touch Bar. It's much easier to use for precise trimming and cutting versus the trackpad, for me.

 

[coachingguy]

I transitioned from a late 2013 15” to a late 2018 15”... I assumed the Touch Bar was a gimmic.... I usually use it for the basics... volume, screen brightness, touch log in, multiple windows... but I’ve begun to use it for screen capture and app specific shortcuts, which have proven to be very helpful.

Coachingguy

 

[steakeyes]

I like that I can remove the default buttons off the of touchbar (I only keep screen brightness, volume control, and sleep and lock buttons) and position the buttons along the touchbar wherever I want them to go. I don't like that the touchbar sometimes turns off and I have to tap it or move the cursor to bring it back. I've also experienced a defect with the 'Touch ID ->' message a few times now where it will persist after I've already signed in to a website in Safari and doesn't go away unless I touch the FP sensor again. Overall, it seems like another point of failure and I'd probably prefer the old physical keys if there was a choice.

 

[Frenchy180]

I use mine for media controls, brightness (comes in handy when I decide to get OCD cleaning the screen), screenshot (don't put the button right next to the touch id though) and if I remember it's there for it I use it to switch tabs in Opera. One of these days I'll get around to customizing it more with BTT.

 

[1rottenapple]

I don’t find it useful right now. In safari you can use this to switch tabs, but why not use the keyboard shortcut.

it has other context specific uses but keyboard shortcuts are faster.
Finally I think it’s annoying having to do two steps to switch the volume or screen brightness whereas physical keys would have been faster.

 

[Populus]

I don’t have a Touch Bar MacBook Pro, and I never really liked it when I tried, but I think I might like it (and find it useful) if there were dedicated buttons at least for volume up, volume down and mute. Many times I forget the audio is loud and I need to quickly lower (or just mute) my Mac’s sound in a fraction of a second, and I can’t do that as quickly with the touchbar menu, it requires at least two touches and a swipe. Sorry but touchbar is not for me (and believe me, I’d like to like it).

 

[Tozovac]

How about for Logic Pro X? Who finds the touchbar invaluable for that? I will be upgrading sometime soon to a touchbar MBP from my 2014 MBA and look forward to (hopefully) helpful scrubbing and other features in Logic via the touchbar.

 

[Naaaaak]

Escape key.

Accidental activation.

 

[pcdtech]

This post is titled “People who use their Touch Bar regularly, what do you use it for?”. It’s pretty clear that this post is asking a question of those who use their Touch Bar regularly. If you’re not one of those people, the OP doesn’t want to hear from you about how much you hate the Touch Bar. There are plenty of posts on that subject. It’s common sense, folks! ?

 

[The Cappy]

Brightness, mute, and volume. If you tap the brightness or volume control buttons, they turn into sliders. But you don't need to use 2 separate actions. Simply put your finger on either icon and begin sliding. This is faster and more accurate control than buttons ever gave.

I've also found the Touch Bar to be useful when highlighting PDFs. It you select a bit of text, the Touch Bar shows a few color boxes. Touch one and your text is highlighted.

Also, I replaced Siri with a dictation button, so it's easy to invoke dictation.

And as others have pointed out, it's also useful for video playback control.

Granted it's not constantly useful. But I never used the function keys except for the brightness and volume and mute anyway, and the Touch Bar does those things better. I used to get frustrated whenever an app assigned important functions to one of the function keys anyway. It was lazy UI design and generally showed a lack of thought with key-bindings. What mnemonic is there for a function assigned to F4?

 

[BoneHead001]

I use it for volume control, brightness control, and anything that appears on the TouchBar in accordance with whatever app I'm using. I've never owned a laptop before — I'm coming from being a desktop user and an iPad Pro user.

 

[ericwn]

It’s a mini touch screen. I’m coming from an iPad Pro (which I sold) so it feels a bit like the iPad when using the MBP.

And what do you use it for, to stay on the topic of this discussion?

Edit: just saw you answered this already! Thanks!

 

[Charliefinn4]

I use it in photoshop to change my brush size /opacity which is a handy shortcut, but for all other uses I find it mostly irritating that it takes 2 presses to do some things and I am constantly triggering the escape by mistake.

 

[gofightlose]

How about for Logic Pro X? Who finds the touchbar invaluable for that? I will be upgrading sometime soon to a touchbar MBP from my 2014 MBA and look forward to (hopefully) helpful scrubbing and other features in Logic via the touchbar.

It is definitely a bit helpful for Logic Pro! When working on a small screen and with plugins, you can change levels and adjust some effects from the Touch Bar, play pause and record as well, it has come in handy.

 

[jlc1978]

I use BetterTouchTool (which does a lot more than just Touchbar) to add full screen, escape, and 1PW keys. I like the volume slider as well and use it a lot. I also use it to see how many new messages I have as I also use uBar and at the small icon level you don't get a number, just a red dot.

 

[MecPro]

Autofill for my credit cards, names, email address, etc

 

[James Brien]

I use it in email for basic functions, emoji bar while using messages, and probably my biggest use of it is for PDF Expert. I find it very useful in this app rather than clicking on all of the tools every time I want to change the highlighter or text color.