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Bpa260

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 4, 2014
15
39
Can the touchbar be locked to show just the F keys for all applications? I am looking to get a new macbook pro, and the 4 ports seem to fit my needs better than just 2 on the base model, but I'm not a fan of the touchbar.
 
Can the touchbar be locked to show just the F keys for all applications? I am looking to get a new macbook pro, and the 4 ports seem to fit my needs better than just 2 on the base model, but I'm not a fan of the touchbar.

Poking around it does not appear there is a way to achieve that. You can set specific apps to only show function keys, however, it's really quite useless to someone like me who only ever used the function buttons for brightness/sound control anyway. For what it's worth, I thought I'd hate the touch-bar at first...but it grew on me. Give it a chance.

Screen Shot 2017-03-13 at 6.39.21 PM.png
 
You can set keyboard preferences so that if you press the function key it will show only the standard function keys. You can also choose to show the expanded control strip for all apps, and you can customize the control strip to show whatever functions you pick.
 
You can set keyboard preferences so that if you press the function key it will show only the standard function keys. You can also choose to show the expanded control strip for all apps, and you can customize the control strip to show whatever functions you pick.

OP seems to want the F keys to show all the time...however in that mode they don't function the typical way a Mac user might expect. Like F11/F12 don't control volume. I'm with you though, you can pretty much tailor the bar to be whatever you'd like it to be.
 
You can make it show the media and brightness controls always by default, with the F keys showing when you hold "Fn", but you can't make the F-keys appear by default.
 
You have to do this for each app you want to have show the function keys, but try this with what @rawweb has shown...

  1. Click on the Apple menu logo in the upper left corner of the screen.
  2. Click on System Preferences.
  3. Click on Keyboard.
  4. Click the Shortcuts tab.
  5. Select Function Keys from the sidebar.
  6. Click the Add (+) button.
  7. Select an app that you want to display the function keys on the Touch Bar as a default.
 
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