Is there a way to restart the Touch Bar on MacBook Pro

Question

I have the MacBook Pro and several times the touch bar will just hang on me — freeze. I wont be able to control anything from it and it's pretty much unresponsive.

Is there a way we can restart it or something where I don't need the whole system to restart.

same issue here on a 16" MBP 2019 - none of the explained fixes seem to do the job for me :/ I always have to fully reboot the system. Any other ideas? — themenace, Jul 02 '20 at 05:54

score 20 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 30 '17 at 14:53

20

On 10.13 High Sierra.

sudo pkill "TouchBarServer"

answered Oct 30 '17 at 14:53

Jarek

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score 11 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 04 '17 at 12:49

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You can Force Quit the "Touch Bar agent" using Activity Monitor, or with

pkill "Touch Bar agent"

answered Apr 04 '17 at 12:49

grg

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Choosing this as answer. Anyone trying this may also need to run the following. "killall ControlStrip" on terminal without the quotes – KD. Jul 28 '17 at 15:02
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These commands did not work for me, but force quitting TouchBarServer in Activity Monitor did. I’m on macOS High Sierra. – Alan H. Oct 23 '17 at 00:26
I needed to use @KD's command `killall ControlStrip` to fix an alignment issue where blank space at the right of the touch bar caused the `<` expander arrow to be hidden.. thanks!! – ptim Dec 02 '17 at 09:35
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In Catalina 10.15.1 this is not enough. Server comes back but touch bar is still frozen. Also no `ControlStrip` process exists when frozen. – Efren Nov 15 '19 at 05:01
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Had to restart to recover ControlStrip to work again in Catalina. I blame the multiple monitors disconnections since this OS version introduced sidecar for ipad – Efren Nov 17 '19 at 23:39
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More or less this doesn't work if you glitch your mac out. To do this, let your mac run out of battery power (once it hibernates) turn it back on. Tada, no touch bar, pkill doesn't work. Can't fix it without rebooting. OSX 10.15 – Greg432 May 18 '20 at 20:02
My touch bar agent isn't running. Answers like this helped me figure out to look for how to relaunch the agent, but so far no luck finding that question. Touchbar unresponsive since low-battery sleep, as @Greg432 described. – ShadSterling Jun 04 '20 at 21:26

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited Jan 21 '20 at 14:07

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You can also Lock your Mac with Control + Command + Q and use TouchID to unlock. It's the easiest way for me

edited Jan 21 '20 at 14:07

Udhy

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answered Jan 21 '20 at 11:39

daerentis

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score 1 · Answer 4 · edited Jun 18 '20 at 15:05

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I made this app that will sit in the menu bar and allows you to refresh the Touch Bar with a mouse click.

It basically automates pkill "Touch Bar agent"; killall "ControlStrip".

edited Jun 18 '20 at 15:05

nohillside

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answered Jun 18 '20 at 14:06

stranger_dev

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Is there a way to restart the Touch Bar on MacBook Pro

4 Answers4