How to Completely Disable the Touch Bar on a MacBook Pro

For several years, Apple replaced the physical function keys on its high-end MacBook Pro models with a dynamic OLED touchscreen known as the Touch Bar. While some users appreciated the contextual shortcuts, many professionals found it frustrating. Because there is no tactile feedback, it is incredibly easy to accidentally brush the Touch Bar while typing, inadvertently muting your audio, skipping a song, or triggering Siri.

If you own an Intel or early Apple Silicon MacBook Pro equipped with a Touch Bar and find it more annoying than helpful, you cannot physically remove it, but you can effectively disable its dynamic features. By forcing it to display a static row of traditional function keys or a completely blank strip, you can stop those frustrating accidental inputs.

Forcing the Touch Bar to Show Static Keys

The most practical solution for most users is to stop the Touch Bar from constantly changing its layout based on what app is open. You can lock it into displaying the traditional F1, F2, F3 (and so on) keys permanently.

1. Click the Apple Logo in the top-left corner of your screen.
2. Select System Settings (or System Preferences on older versions of macOS).
3. Scroll down the left sidebar and click on Keyboard.
4. Look for the section labelled Touch Bar settings and click the button next to it.
5. In the new window, find the dropdown menu next to “Touch Bar shows”.
6. Change the selection from “App Controls” to F1, F2, etc. Keys.
7. Ensure the “Press and hold Fn key to” dropdown is set to “Show Control Strip” so you still have a way to adjust brightness and volume if absolutely necessary.
8. Click Done.

Your Touch Bar will now display a static, unmoving row of F-keys, making it function much more like a traditional keyboard.

Making the Touch Bar Completely Blank

If forcing the F-keys isn’t enough and you still find yourself accidentally hitting them, you can take a more extreme approach: making the Touch Bar completely blank so that touching it does absolutely nothing.

1. Open the System Settings and navigate back to the Keyboard menu.
2. Click on the Touch Bar settings button.
3. Change the “Touch Bar shows” dropdown menu to Quick Actions.
4. Next, click the button labelled Customise Control Strip…. Your screen will blur, and your Touch Bar will enter an editing mode.
5. Look down at your physical Touch Bar. You will see several icons jiggling.
6. Use your mouse trackpad to drag every single icon down towards the bottom of the screen until they disappear from the Touch Bar entirely.
7. Once the Touch Bar is completely black and empty, click Done on the screen.

Because there are no longer any Quick Actions assigned to the bar, and it is set to only show Quick Actions, the Touch Bar will remain completely blank and unresponsive to accidental touches.