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Esc key option not available on the Touch Bar anymore

I can't see the "Esc" key on the left side of the Touch Bar anymore, while watching any video in Safari. Is it removed in macOS Catalina? Does anybody know how to get the "Esc" key back on the Touch Bar?

MacBook Pro with Touch Bar

Posted on Dec 30, 2019 3:16 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jan 9, 2020 2:16 PM

I had this issue too on my girlfriends 13" MacBook Pro 2018 that was just recently upgraded to Catalina.


The solution is to restart the "TouchBarServer". You can find it in the activity monitor. However, it seemed to be gone from there too for me. So I killed it through the terminal:


  1. Open the terminal, (cmd space, and type terminal).
  2. type the following and press enter: sudo pkill TouchBarServer
  3. Type in your password to give permission to kill the TouchBarServer.


And the esc key is back!


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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 9, 2020 2:16 PM in response to Fahham

I had this issue too on my girlfriends 13" MacBook Pro 2018 that was just recently upgraded to Catalina.


The solution is to restart the "TouchBarServer". You can find it in the activity monitor. However, it seemed to be gone from there too for me. So I killed it through the terminal:


  1. Open the terminal, (cmd space, and type terminal).
  2. type the following and press enter: sudo pkill TouchBarServer
  3. Type in your password to give permission to kill the TouchBarServer.


And the esc key is back!


Esc key option not available on the Touch Bar anymore

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