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Touch Bar not working, when I press the arrow pointing left to expand it disappears

this just started happening now and ive had my MacBook Pro since 2020. the Touch Bar just randomly went off and I tried to do the terminal thing to fix it and it kind of worked. now that its on when i try to expand it by tapping the left arrow icon it disappears again and only pops up randomly. so I cannot use the other functions besides the brightness and volume settings.

MacBook Pro (2020 and later)

Posted on Aug 5, 2021 4:21 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Aug 6, 2021 10:06 AM

sidnee01 wrote:

this just started happening now and ive had my MacBook Pro since 2020. the Touch Bar just randomly went off and I tried to do the terminal thing to fix it and it kind of worked. now that its on when i try to expand it by tapping the left arrow icon it disappears again and only pops up randomly. so I cannot use the other functions besides the brightness and volume settings.


For Intel Mac:


Try resetting the SMC http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3964


no resolve—Try resetting NVRAM/PRAM http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379



for M1 Mac:

M1 SoC - SMC reset equivalent is Shut down, close the lid 30 secs+ , reboot as normal


no resolve—Try a SafeBoot https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262

2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Aug 6, 2021 10:06 AM in response to sidnee01

sidnee01 wrote:

this just started happening now and ive had my MacBook Pro since 2020. the Touch Bar just randomly went off and I tried to do the terminal thing to fix it and it kind of worked. now that its on when i try to expand it by tapping the left arrow icon it disappears again and only pops up randomly. so I cannot use the other functions besides the brightness and volume settings.


For Intel Mac:


Try resetting the SMC http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3964


no resolve—Try resetting NVRAM/PRAM http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379



for M1 Mac:

M1 SoC - SMC reset equivalent is Shut down, close the lid 30 secs+ , reboot as normal


no resolve—Try a SafeBoot https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262

Aug 23, 2021 8:27 PM in response to sidnee01

It's happened to me several times over the last 4-6 weeks, intermittently, upon waking from sleep. I got it to return by shutting down and restarting, but that's not convenient when I've got over 80 windows open. In that case, by using Activity Monitor, I quit the TouchBarServer process and it automatically restarted, restoring the Touch Bar without having to shut down and restart the computer. If I get time, I'll peruse the logs and see why it's going haywire, but for now this work-around is working for me.


MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2016) running macOS Big Sur Version 11.5.2

Touch Bar not working, when I press the arrow pointing left to expand it disappears

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