Control Strip (Touch Bar) randomly disappears

I've also had a similar problem, although it seems to be tied to the application that I'm currently running. For example, I was using iMessage and after about 15-20 minutes of use, the Touch Bar went completely black, but when I opened Finder or Mail, it would awaken the Touch Bar with the options for that particular application. I found that if I quit iMessage and reopened it, it would work fine again for another 15-20 minutes and then I'd have to restart it again. I hoping this is just a little bug that they'll fix soon.

Here is my quite different version. 13" MacBook Pro, no external anything. Started tonight, and happens EVERY TIME I tap the emoji button on the left when I'm in FaceBook. Have Photos open: when I move the cursor to it, the touch bar reappears, when I move it to the Safari window and tap, it goes dark. BTW, JUST got my two month old MB Pro back from apple because the shift and space bar stopped responding. Miss the old days when Apple products worked w/o issue.

Mine's just started doing it too (13") seems related to emojis as they are crashing the strip on mine.

Just another nail in the coffin of my Apple experience, had 5 macbook's of varying flavours and this is overpriced rubbish. Fed up being a Beta tester for them

Same here. 13" MBP is connected to a LG 4K Ultrafine via USB-C.

In addition, sometimes the LG's display suddenly gets dark for a few seconds, and sometimes the same happens to the MBP's internal display.

I have similar issue. I thought it was related with my external display, but it is not. It is happening even when I do not use my external display. I use Microsoft remote desktop and function buttons disappear. Even so I pressed the fn button, all F1-F10 shows, but missing "esc"...

Same here. It happens to me with or without external display. I noticed it happens when I remote to windows pc or use parallels with virtual windows. I am trying different apps for remote desktop connection, but the Microsoft one is fastest on mouse responses..

I still have the problem. After I open my mac the touch bar shows. But if I am inactive for a while, the backlight of keyboard goes off as well the touch bar. When I press keyboard (space bar) the lights is back, but not touch bar. Pressing fn brings touch bar. After than I run Parallels Client remote application (I set F1-F10 to be use) and remote to my work pc. I was inactive for a while and touch bar disappear. pressing fn, brings back F1-F10 but not esc

Thank you for the helpful tip (i.e. hitting the fn key to revive the touch bar). I've been having the same problem. Looks to me as if this sudden disappearance occurs only when my MBP is not connected to the power.

Writing you from March 22. Still no news about it. It looks more like a software problem. As you know TouchBar runs on a separate chip which uses watchOS. And I'm sure it's a software problem.

Seriously, I have the same problem since the beginning of December (2 weeks after purchase). I had hopes for software updates, none of those updates helped. They are "fixing bugs" in new updates, but they can't fix their new MacBooks "killer feature". I hope for the next software update.

I've found 2 temporarily fixes.

1st fix: just press Fn button once. It should bring back all buttons for some time.

2nd fix: reset NVRAM. It helped me for 2-3 days. Then again the same problem.

There is no any permanent fix at this moment. Sorry.

Updated to 10.12.4 last night.

Problem persists.

I use an external monitor. The touch bar disappears after a fairly short while of use. Pressing the FN button does nothing. It is so far gone that the option "System Preferences->Keyboard->Customize Control Strip" actually disappears at the same time. I mean, the button is just not there.

Between this, and the lack of non-retina display support, and the horrible bugs with the Apple-recommended 21.5" monitors, and the lack of any useful docks (still!)... I'm sending this broken iThing back today.

Is it customary for Apple to provide no feedback in threads like this?

Updated to 10.12.4. fine for a few days, doing it again now. Also occassionally the mbp display dims itself for no reason, and videos are mute until I use the touch bar and volume slider... Apple just don't give a s**t.

3 of my colleagues have now bought Windoze machines, and they were all Mac champions, until they hiked the prices with the new models.

After an update I do not have this issue anymore. At least so far as the update appeared. The interesting thing is that I have second laptop touch bar 13", and it did not have any troubles with the touch bar when it was connected to the screen.

Hey, I just did a couple quick tests with my timer and I think it's just an energy saving option where they dim after 1 minute of inactivity then completely shut off after 1min and 15secs. I think we just don't have to update to manipulate this yet i guess until the update we just need to tap the touchbar to reveal it again or the fn key

I'm also having the same problem. I've had my 13' MBP for a month (so the latest release in the first week of July). Emojis seem to crash the touch bar, particularly when I try to use them for Facebook. Given I run a business via fb, this is painful as I'm on that particular site a lot. I'm hoping there's a fix soon!

I have been having this same issue, particularly with the Messages application. Extremely frustrating, and I haven't found any information on fixes. Unacceptable glitch for such a high price point for this new MacBook pro 2016 that I use for College and Work daily.