Why Did Apple Remove the Touch Bar? The Real Reasons

Apple removed the Touch Bar because the people it was built for, pro users, kept asking for their physical keys back. Apple's own words when it dropped the bar in October 2021 were that "physical function keys, including a wider Escape key, replace the Touch Bar," and its marketing chief Greg Joswiak said pro customers "love that full-size, tactile feel of those function keys." Underneath that are three problems that never got solved: you had to look down to use it, the missing Escape key annoyed almost everyone, and it only ever shipped on one product line, so app developers had little reason to build for it.

If you're reading this on a 2016–2022 MacBook Pro, you've probably felt at least one of those. Maybe you've hit a volume button you didn't mean to touch, or reached for F5 out of habit and found a strip of glass. Maybe you just wondered why the thing on your laptop vanished from every new Mac.

This guide separates what Apple actually said from what people guess, walks through the timeline from launch to the last Touch Bar Mac, and ends with the part most articles skip: what it means for you if you still have one.

Applies to MacBook Pro models with a Touch Bar (sold 2016–2022). Not affiliated with Apple.

The short answer

Reason	Who says so	How solid
Pro users preferred physical function keys	Apple (press release and Greg Joswiak, 2021)	Official
The missing physical Escape key	Apple (Phil Schiller, 2019)	Official, and Apple fixed it in 2019
You have to look at it to use it; no feel under your fingers	Reviewers and users since 2016	Widely reported, not an Apple statement
Only on MacBook Pro, so few apps went deep on it	Reviewers and developers	Strong inference
It launched with the butterfly keyboard and fewer ports	Reviewers	Context, not a direct cause

Apple has never published a longer explanation. Anything beyond the first two rows is an informed read of the evidence, and you should treat it that way, including here.

What Apple actually said

When it launched (2016)

Apple introduced the Touch Bar on October 27, 2016, as a thin multi-touch OLED strip that replaced the row of function keys on the new 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro. It came with Touch ID built into its right end, which was the first time a Mac had a fingerprint sensor.

The pitch was that the function keys were a 1970s idea most people barely used. A row that changed with the app in front of you, showing formatting buttons in Pages, tabs in Safari, or a timeline scrubber in Final Cut Pro, was supposed to be smarter than twelve keys that did the same thing everywhere.

When it added Escape back (2019)

In November 2019, the new 16-inch MacBook Pro kept the Touch Bar but split a physical Escape key off its left end, and moved Touch ID to its own key on the right. Phil Schiller, then head of marketing, told CNET that if he ranked the complaints, the top one was customers who wanted a physical Escape key.

That's the closest Apple came to admitting the design had a problem, and it fixed only one part of it.

When it removed it (2021)

On October 18, 2021, Apple announced the redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Pro and M1 Max. The press release said physical function keys, including a wider Escape key, replace the Touch Bar. In an interview with Wired, Greg Joswiak said there was no doubt that Apple's pro customers love the full-size, tactile feel of those keys.

That's the whole official answer: pros wanted keys, so pros got keys.

The last one (2022–2023)

The Touch Bar hung on in one place: the 13-inch MacBook Pro. Apple released an M2 version in 2022, still with the bar, and quietly discontinued it on October 30, 2023, when the M3 MacBook Pros launched. That was the last Mac with a Touch Bar.

Timeline at a glance

Date	What happened
Oct 2016	Touch Bar launches on the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro, with Touch ID
2017–2019	Touch Bar stays on the higher-end MacBook Pro models each year
Nov 2019	16-inch MacBook Pro brings back a physical Escape key next to the bar
2020	13-inch models, Intel and the first M1 MacBook Pro, keep the bar and get the separate Escape key
Oct 2021	New 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro drop the Touch Bar for physical function keys
2022	13-inch M2 MacBook Pro ships, still with a Touch Bar
Oct 2023	13-inch MacBook Pro discontinued; no Mac has a Touch Bar after this

The real reasons it didn't stick

1. You can't use it without looking

Keys have edges, travel, and a click. You can find F12 or the volume key in the dark. The Touch Bar was a flat sheet of glass with no feedback, so every tap meant glancing down from the screen. For touch typists and anyone who works fast, that's a step backward.

It also meant accidental taps. Your finger rests near the number row while you type, brushes the bar, and suddenly the volume jumps or Siri wakes up. The bar's buttons also moved around depending on the app, so muscle memory never formed.

2. Escape, and the rest of the function keys

Developers and anyone who uses Vim, terminal apps, or keyboard-heavy tools press Escape constantly. On 2016–2019 models it was a virtual button that sometimes disappeared or lagged. Apple fixed that in 2019, but the same issue applied to F1–F12: plenty of pro apps, games, and IDEs rely on them, and showing them on the bar meant holding the fn key or changing a setting per app.

3. It only lived on the MacBook Pro

This one matters more than it sounds. The Touch Bar never came to the MacBook Air, the iMac, the Mac mini, or Apple's own Magic Keyboard. So for a developer, building great Touch Bar controls meant building something only a slice of Mac users would ever see, and that even those users lost when they plugged in an external keyboard.

The result was predictable. A lot of apps added a few buttons in 2016 and never updated them. The bar's best moments, like scrubbing video or picking emoji, were nice but rarely something people couldn't already do faster with the keyboard or trackpad.

4. It arrived at the worst possible moment

The 2016 MacBook Pro also brought the butterfly keyboard, which became infamous for sticky and repeating keys, and dropped MagSafe, HDMI, and the SD card slot for USB-C only. The Touch Bar got judged as part of that package.

When Apple redesigned the MacBook Pro in 2021, it reversed most of those decisions at once: MagSafe, HDMI, and the SD slot came back alongside the physical function keys. Read that way, removing the Touch Bar was part of a broader "we heard you" release, not a verdict on the bar alone.

What was good about it

It wasn't all bad, and plenty of owners still like theirs. Slider controls for volume and brightness are genuinely nicer than tapping a key ten times. Touch ID on a laptop was a big deal in 2016. And as a display, it's a strip of real OLED that can show anything, which is exactly why people still customize it today.

What this means if you still have one

Apple stopping sales doesn't make your Touch Bar stop working. It's still part of macOS on supported models, it still shows app controls and the Control Strip, and Touch ID still unlocks your Mac. Here's how to get the most out of it now.

Set it up the way you'd want keys to work. In System Settings › Keyboard › Touch Bar Settings you can make the bar always show function keys, show only the Control Strip, or show app controls. If the original complaint was "I want my F-keys," that one setting fixes most of it. Our complete guide to customizing the Touch Bar walks through every option, including the hidden ones.

Fix it before you give up on it. A Touch Bar that's black, frozen, or stuck on one app is usually a crashed background process, not dead hardware. Start with our fixes by model, which go from a ten-second restart to an SMC reset.

Give it a job. The biggest reason the bar felt pointless was that most of the time it showed nothing you needed. Third-party apps can change that: some add custom buttons and widgets, and others turn the bar into a screen you actually look at. See the best Touch Bar apps in 2026 for the options, sorted by what you want the bar to do.

Turning the Touch Bar into something you'll miss

That last option is why we built Revive the Touchbar, a menu bar app for MacBook Pro models with a Touch Bar. Instead of buttons you have to look down to find, it turns the whole strip into an animated display: ambient lighting like Rainbow Wave and Aurora, retro and gaming scenes, and live tools such as a clock, a focus timer, and a CPU and memory monitor. You can run your own text across it like an LED sign or drop in a GIF, and new animations arrive about every week.

It fixes the "you have to look at it" problem by turning that into the point. A display you glance at is useful; a button you have to hunt for isn't. Browse the full animation library or download it free. It needs macOS 13 or later and a MacBook Pro with a Touch Bar.

Will Apple ever bring the Touch Bar back?

There's no sign of it. Every MacBook Pro since late 2021 has shipped with physical function keys, and Apple hasn't said anything to suggest a return. Rumors about future Mac designs come and go, but none from Apple point back to a Touch Bar, so it's safer to treat the 2016–2022 models as the whole story.

That makes the bar a bit of a collector's item: a feature that existed on one line of Macs for about seven years. If you own one, it's worth making it good rather than ignoring it.

Frequently asked questions

Why did Apple get rid of the Touch Bar?

Apple said pro users love the full-size, tactile feel of physical function keys, so in 2021 it replaced the Touch Bar with a row of keys and a wider Escape key. Users had also long complained about the missing Escape key, accidental taps, and having to look down to use it.

When did Apple stop making the Touch Bar?

Apple removed it from the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro in October 2021. The last model with a Touch Bar, the 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro, was discontinued on October 30, 2023.

Was the Touch Bar a failure?

As a replacement for function keys, mostly yes: Apple reversed it after five years and never put it on any other Mac. As a display it had real strengths, like smooth volume and brightness sliders and Touch ID, which is why many owners still keep and customize theirs.

Which MacBooks have a Touch Bar?

Only MacBook Pro models sold between 2016 and 2022: the higher-end 13-inch and 15-inch models from 2016 to 2019, the 16-inch from 2019, and the 13-inch Intel, M1, and M2 models from 2020 to 2022. No MacBook Air, iMac, or desktop Mac ever had one.

Does the Touch Bar still work in 2026?

Yes. It's still supported by macOS on the Macs that have it, and it still shows app controls, the Control Strip, and Touch ID. If yours is black or frozen, it's usually a software issue you can fix by restarting the Touch Bar process.

Can I make the Touch Bar show function keys all the time?

Yes. Open System Settings › Keyboard › Touch Bar Settings and set "Touch Bar shows" to F1, F2, etc. Keys. You can also hold the fn key to show them temporarily, or set them to appear only in specific apps.

Animations in this post

**VHS Tape** · Tracking lines, glitches, and a play button.

**Clock** · The time, in big glowing digits.

**System Monitor** · Live CPU and memory use on your Mac.

**Your Text** · Your own words, scrolling in lights.

**Synthwave** · A neon grid races toward an 80s sunset.

Light up your Touch Bar

Revive the Touchbar is a menu bar app for MacBook Pro models with a Touch Bar. Download it and try every animation.

Download free