How to Permanently Disable the Touch Bar on a MacBook Pro

Why Disable the Touch Bar?

Between 2016 and 2020, Apple replaced the physical function keys on MacBook Pros with the Touch Bar, a dynamic OLED touchscreen strip. While visually impressive, many professional users, particularly touch-typists and programmers, found it deeply frustrating. It lacks tactile feedback, making it impossible to rest your fingers on the keys, resulting in accidental volume changes, unintentional Siri activations, and mistyped Escape key presses. Apple eventually admitted defeat and returned to physical keys on newer models. However, if you are stuck using an older Touch Bar MacBook and find yourself constantly triggering it by accident, you can completely disable the OLED screen’s touch input using a Terminal command.

How to Disable the Touch Bar via Terminal

To disable the Touch Bar, we need to stop the specific macOS background process (called an agent) that controls the touch interface. This requires administrator privileges.

1. Open the Terminal application on your Mac (Applications > Utilities > Terminal).
2. To disable the Touch Bar process, you need to unload its configuration file from the launch daemon. Type the following command exactly:

   sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.touchbar.user-device.plist

3. Press Enter. You will be prompted to type your Mac’s administrator password (the characters will remain invisible as you type). Press Enter again.
4. The Touch Bar will instantly go black and become entirely unresponsive to touch.

Important Caveats Regarding the Escape Key

By completely killing the Touch Bar agent, you also disable the digital Escape (Esc) key located on the far left side of the screen. Because the Escape key is critical for navigating macOS and using software, you must remap it to a physical key before you disable the Touch Bar.

1. Open System Settings (or System Preferences).
2. Navigate to Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts…
3. Select Modifier Keys from the sidebar.
4. Use the dropdown menus to remap a physical key that you rarely use (such as the Caps Lock key or the Globe/Fn key) to act as the Escape key.

With Caps Lock functioning as Escape, and the OLED strip deactivated, you can now rest your hands near the top of the keyboard without fear of accidental inputs.

How to Re-Enable the Touch Bar

If you need to sell the laptop or decide you miss the functionality, you can easily reverse the process.

1. Open Terminal.
2. Run the exact same command, but change the word unload to load:

3. sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.touchbar.user-device.plist

4. Press Enter, provide your password, and the OLED strip will immediately light up again.