How to Manually Refresh Touch Bar on MacBook Pro
The Touch Bar on MacBook Pro changes dynamically depending on what application is open and what action is going on within Mac OS. Or at least, that’s what’s supposed to happen. Rarely, the Touch Bar stops working, will get stuck and become unresponsive, maybe even display an erroneous button, or show a blank button that doesn’t do anything. Typically the Touch Bar gets itself back in working order once the troubled application in question becomes responsive, exited, or the app is force quit, but sometimes you may need to manually force the Touch Bar to refresh and reload.
We’ll show you how to relaunch Touch Bar on a Mac, as well as how to target just the Control Strip portion of Touch Bar to force that to refresh.
Remember, the Touch Bar is the entire touchable strip across the top of new model MacBook Pro keyboards, whereas Control Strip is just the far right portion of the Touch Bar display. You can target both, or either to manually force them to refresh.
How to Force Relaunching Touch Bar on MacBook Pro
You can force the Touch Bar to refresh and reload by killing the “Touch Bar agent” process. You can do this either though the Activity Monitor application or by the command line, whichever works best for your skill level:
Refreshing Touch Bar from Activity Monitor:
- Open the Activity Monitor application, found within /Applications/Utilities/
- Find and locate “Touch Bar agent” process and kill it
Refreshing Touch Bar from the command line:
- Open the Terminal application, found in /Applications/Utilities/ directory
- Type the following command syntax:
- Hit return key to kill and refresh Touch Bar
In MacOS Catalina:
sudo pkill TouchBarServer; sudo killall ControlStrip
In MacOS Mojave:
sudo pkill TouchBarServer
In MacOS High Sierra, Sierra:
pkill "Touch Bar agent"
How to Refresh the Control Strip in Touch Bar
To manually force just the Control Strip portion of Touch Bar on Mac OS to reload, you will turn to the command line.
- Open the Terminal application, found in /Applications/Utilities/ folder
- Type the following syntax precisely:
- Hit return key to kill and relaunch the Control Strip (Touch Bar)
killall ControlStrip
Targeting just the Control Strip will usually resolve the mystery blank button issue.
Forcing Touch Bar to refresh and reload may fix issues with either the Touch Bar or the Control Strip, or both, though sometimes you might need to reboot the entire Mac to resolve more stubborn issues if the Touch Bar is totally unresponsive.
Nothing worked. Fall back on same old hard reboot.
THANK YOU! It’s so refreshing when Google takes you somewhere that *actually* provides what you were looking for. :) Nailed it!
My Esc button has a mind of its own and funtions without my toucing it. it goes into a spasm and I have tried restarting my computer and resetting the touch bar but nothing works!
I need help it stops me from doing anything on my laptop.
Try wiping off and cleaning the Touch Bar, if it is dirty it may erroneously register taps.
Hello,
I am having this exact same problem – my Touch Bar goes completely loopy and is pressing all the button by itself making it impossible to work..
did you ever find a solution to this? I keep searching how to be able to completely disable the Touch Bar and remap the esc key to another key, but it looks like this is not possible –
would love some help if anyone found out how to resolve..
Thanks
I’m having the same issue
Please help
I bought my MacBook two years back and few days after the warranty exhausted, my touch bar started giving me trouble. It used to work sometimes and sometimes not, and after I took it for a check up to an Apple Center, it completely stopped working and I had to pay Rs. 2000 (US $28.5 approx). Nothing good came out of it. The guy at the Apple service center is telling me that the repair will cost Rs. 35000 (US $500 approx.) I am just a student who makes no money, how I am suppose to get my touch bar repaired?
I have a solid white light along the entire toolbar strip. if I press it responds, however, I don’t know what I have been pressing. How do I get it back to normal? I have resetted the toolbar already.
Wow, this worked for me. It was driving me bananas. Thank YOU!
I am having the same problem all you are having can you please help me reboot my mac book pro so my touch bar can work on my mac book pro please and thank you
MacOS Catalina 10.15.2
Finder/applications/utilities/ActivityMonitor
search for Touchbarserver
Kill it
Do a hard shut down by keeping the power button pressed.
The touch bar should be fine once you restart.
Thank you. Nothing else worked but this for me.
When you say “kill it,” that means nothing to me. How do you do that. I can select “TouchBarServer” in the Activity Monitor (in the Memory tab), but than what? Hitting the DELETE key does nothing. Doing a COMMAND-X does nothing. Using my pistol didn’t work either. :-)
How do you “kill it” in activity monitor? (I’m running Catalina.)
Do you just “select it” and then hold down the power button? I don’t see how/why that would kill that specific item.
Rich, I suggest reading the article, it discusses exactly how to quit, kill, restart / refresh the Touch Bar
https://osxdaily.com/2017/01/11/manually-refresh-touch-bar-mac/
Rajiv, thanks a lot for sharing your solutions!
Works fine to me.
Regards buddy!
I’m running on Catalina. This means there is nothing in the activity monitor. Instead I went on terminal and types: “sudo pkill TouchBarServer” and it shut down and then worked? Hope this helps someone x
Thank you!
That worked.
My Touch Bar is blank apart from the “e” of the esc key… the commands still work if I blindly tap them – eg. the volume or brightness will change, but as I can’t see what I am tapping its not very useful! I have tried doing the above (killing the Touch Bar server), resetting the NVRAM, hard shut downs etc. and nothing… any ideas?
the same issue but from right side, about half key size.
Hi there,
Were you able to resolve your issue? I am currently facing the exact same problem
Same problem :(
No solution, right?
I purchased a MacBook Pro with a touch bar. Then I updated the system and now am locked out of the computer. It does not take the password, neither can it restart with Command+R. Stuck, because I cannot access the computer now.
macOS Mojave Version 10.14.1 MacBook Pro 13-inch 2018 bought January this year.
My Touch Bar issue: There is actually light, currently, but very low, I am not able to see the Touch Bar unless if I turn off my room lights and reduce the brightness of the screen. At first, before reaching this darkness, it had turned to a burgundy shade. The Touch Bar keeps getting darker and it will probably become totally black soon. However, it is still working and touchable- the buttons respond when I touch them-(but how can I use it if I cannot see it?). By the way Touch ID is still working. I do not know what to do. I tried some things but they did not work, such as refreshing the Touch Bar through Activity Monitor and reseting NVRAM, restarting the computer. The nearest Apple Store is a 4-hour flight away from me.
Make sure the Touch Bar brightness is turned up all the way.
If there is a hardware problem, call Apple Support on the phone and have them ship you a box to repair the computer. Your Mac is under warranty if you bought it less than a year ago.
Press the Fn button and release it. It should unfreeze the light bar.
Thanks so much for the step!
Really helped me.
my macbook pro touch bar was unresponsive. also the command line tips did not work at all.
restart over apple menue did also not work. only a hard turn off with pressing the power button did the trick for me. saved all open data before.
Same issue on my macbook. Let me know if somebody had fixed this on Mojave.
My MacBook pro Touch bar is became totally black, Only touch ID is working, nothing is showing in touch bar.
I observer one thing is there is no customize touch bar option in the keyboard. there is no light nothing in the Touch Bar.
Could you please help me in this.
I’ve got the same issue. There is actually light, currently, but very low, I am not able to see the Touch Bar unless if I turn off my room lights and reduce the brightness of the screen. At first, before reaching this darkness, it had turned to a burgundy shade. The Touch Bar keeps getting darker and it will probably become totally black soon. However, it is still working and touchable- the buttons respond when I touch them-(but how can I use it if I cannot see it?). By the way Touch ID is still working. Did you find a resolution? I do not know what to do. I tried some things but they did not work and the nearest Apple Store is a 4-hour flight away from me.
The touch ID piece is completely separate, it just happens to be next to the touch bar and touchable but is connected on the other side of the motherboard, also it does not have the LCD screen under the touch response part and is made of a different material to make the fingerprint readable.
Did it work again? I’m facing the same issues
I purchased my MacBook Pro with TouchBar on April 2017, and now the touch bar is not working properly. When I touch the emotion symbol the touch bar goes blank and non-responsive.
Yeah I’ve had my MacBook Pro for a little over a year now and the last few months my Touch Bar will go completely blank. still works though, if a randomly tap on the bar I will hit the volume and brightness buttons. It went out for like 3 months (after an update), then started working for a couple months. my Mac just had another update and it stopped working again! This is so frustrating. Ive tried the above steps and didn’t work, but since typing this reply it just came back on. I’m super confused??
Wait, what? How???
WAIT WHAT? I’m typing a response too and it is not working for me.
MacOS Mojave:
sudo pkill TouchBarServerI tried all of the above, but nothing works. With the commands, terminal tells me that ´´there is no matching processes´´.
You’re sure? Here’s what I put in (dont copy paste, type out yourself):
pkill controlstrip
I purchased MacBook Pro with TouchBar and now the touch bar is not working properly. so help me…
If you can’t scroll sound and/or brightness with your touchbar anymore, perhaps you have made recent changes to your settings. Go to settings>accessibility>minimize/>deactivate the ”activate zoom with the touchbar”. That solved the problem for me!!!
Thank you so much! your solution helped me so much !!!!
Hey,
Thanks. I used the part to restart the Control Strip. My volume button was not changing the volume on sliding on the control strip. After issuing the command you specified, it restarted and is working fine now :)
Touch bar agent isn’t showing in the activity monitor so i cant terminate it.
I have the same problem.
Did you ever figure it out?
No such animal! It’s called “Touch Bar Server”!
If you’re confused by where exactly to type the commands open the program Terminal which is located in the applications section in the utilities folder.
Also, make SURE you write the command EXACTLY as it appears. It wasn’t working for me either, but then I capitalized the same letters you did and then it worked!
My touch bar was frozen on the right side and would not function at all over there. I simply typed in the command killall ControlStrip (WITH THE capital C and S), hit the enter key, and it just unfroze and is working perfectly now!
P.S. Thank you sooooo much for creating this, seriously. lol I had been trying to figure out what was wrong for hours. I was about to come to the conclusion that the lil bit of water I got on it just broke it or something. lol.
THANK YOU AGAIN!!!
Yes! The same thing happened to me a few drops of water spilled on the control strip and it completely froze for a day and I thought I broke it. This article was a life saver!
I purchased my MacBook Pro with TouchBar on April 2017, and now the touch bar is not working properly. When I touch the emotion symbol the touch bar goes blank and non-responsive.
Thats not normal. You should go to apple technicians to fix it or use your guarantee.
Nah, that’s totally normal. I bought mine in 2016, and I have that issue periodically too. It’s just got some bugs in it.
I went through all this and wasn’t able to resolve. Turned out to be a setting in Control Panel > Keyboard. It needs to be set to App Controls with Control Strip. User had accidentally changed it to Extended Control Strip without realising.
Even Apple Support weren’t aware of this setting and we were going all kinds of other resets before I stumbled across it.
you nailed it. thanks!
It’s not an intuitive find, but this resolved all my features missing except for the escape key. I chose ‘Touch Bar shows – Expanded Control Strip’. Thanks!
Hi,
I tried the above and although both executed fine. The touch bar didn’t refresh.
How do you restart the touch bar without rebooting the computer?
There is also “TouchBarUserDevice” along with “Touch Bar agent” and you can kill both of them.
I recommend rebooting though. Maybe Apple will fix Sierra one day, but probably not since it’s in maintenance mode for Mac OS 10.13!