Use the Touch Bar on Mac

If your Mac has a Touch Bar, you can use familiar gestures—like tap, swipe, or slide—directly on the Touch Bar to adjust settings, use Siri, access function keys, and do tasks in different apps.

The Touch Bar, across the top of the keyboard, showing buttons that vary by app or task on the left and, on the right, the collapsed Control Strip.

Control Strip

The Control Strip, located at the right end of the Touch Bar, lets you use Siri or easily adjust common settings—just tap the buttons or, for settings like brightness and volume, quickly swipe left or right on the buttons. You can also expand the Control Strip to access more buttons.

The collapsed Control Strip includes buttons—from left to right—to expand the Control Strip, increase or decrease display brightness and volume, mute or unmute, and use Siri.
  • Expand the Control Strip: Tap the Expand button.

    Depending on your Mac model and how you customize the Touch Bar, you can also press and hold the Fn key or the Globe key on the keyboard to expand the Control Strip.

  • Use Control Strip buttons: Tap the buttons to adjust settings or control video or music playback. For some settings—such as display brightness—you can touch and hold the button to change the setting.

    Buttons in the expanded Control Strip include—from left to right—display brightness, Mission Control, Applications, keyboard brightness, video or music playback, and volume.
  • Collapse the Control Strip: Tap the Close button.

App buttons

Other buttons in the Touch Bar vary depending on the app you’re using or the task you’re doing. Each app is different—try out the Touch Bar to learn what you can do.

For example, here are the buttons available to tap in the Touch Bar when you select a file in the Finder:

The Touch Bar with buttons specific to the Finder, such as the Tag button.

You can use the Touch Bar to quickly add emoji to your text in some apps. Just tap the Emoji button, swipe to scroll through the emoji (organized by category, such as Frequently Used or Smileys & People), then tap the one you want to use.

Tip: In some apps, you can customize the Touch Bar to add buttons for the tasks you do most often.

Typing suggestions

When you’re typing text on your Mac, the Touch Bar can show words or phrases you might want to use next (called typing suggestions), to help you save time.

  • Show typing suggestions: Tap the Typing Suggestions button.

    The Typing suggestions button in the Touch Bar.
  • Use typing suggestions: Tap a word, phrase, or emoji. Spelling corrections are shown in blue.

    Typing suggestions showing words and emoji, and the button on the left to hide typing suggestions.
  • Hide typing suggestions: Tap the Close button in the Touch Bar.

If the Typing Suggestions button isn’t shown in the Touch Bar, choose View > Customize Touch Bar, then select “Show typing suggestions.” Or choose Apple menu > System Settings, click Keyboard in the sidebar (you may need to scroll down), click Touch Bar Settings, then turn on “Show typing suggestions.”

Open Keyboard settings for me

Colors

In apps where you can change the color of text or objects, you can use the Touch Bar to select a color, shade, or mode (such as RGB or HSB).

The Touch Bar showing the Colors button among app-specific buttons.
  • Select a color: Touch and hold the Colors button, then slide your finger to a color.

    The Touch Bar showing choices from no color on the left to black on the right.
  • Select a shade: Tap the Colors button, touch and hold a color, then slide your finger to a shade.

  • Select a mode or custom color: Tap the Colors button, tap the color list on the left, then tap a color mode, such as RGB. To use a custom color you saved, tap Swatches.

    The Touch Bar showing color modes—from left to right—Simple, Grayscale, RGB, CMYK, and HSB. At the right end is the Swatches button.

    Use the sliders for a mode to change values, such as hue or saturation. To save your changes to Swatches, tap the color (a + appears), then tap it again (a checkmark appears).

    The Touch Bar showing hue, saturation, and brightness sliders for the HSB mode. At the left end is the button to show all modes; at the right, the button to save a custom color.
  • Hide colors or the color values: Tap the Close button in the Touch Bar.

Function keys

Many macOS keyboard shortcuts use function keys (F1 through F12)—for example, F11 shows the desktop. On a Mac with a Touch Bar, the function keys are buttons in the Touch Bar instead of physical keyboard keys.

  1. To show the function keys in the Touch Bar, press and hold the Fn key or the Globe key (depending on your Mac model) on the keyboard.

    Make sure to customize the Touch Bar in Keyboard settings so the function keys are shown when you press and hold the key.

    Function keys in the Touch Bar.
  2. Tap a function key in the Touch Bar.

    If a keyboard shortcut includes a modifier key, such as Option or Command, press and hold the Fn key or the Globe key with the modifier key. For example, to use Fn-Control-F3 to move to the Dock, press and hold the Fn key or the Globe key and the Control key together, then tap F3 in the Touch Bar.

See the Apple Support article Use the function keys on MacBook Pro with Touch Bar.

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