Disable Touchbar or Esc?

I just figured out a way to disable the Esc key on the Touch Bar:

1. Download Karabiner-Elements from GitHub: https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements/blob/master/README.md, install it, and launch it.
2. Under devices, in the “Modify events from this device” section, “Apple Internal Keyboard” is enabled by default. Also enable “No product name, Product Type 0x8600.” This is the Touch Bar.
3. In “Simple Modifications,” klick on “Add item” and remap “escape” to, say, “left_shift” (or any other key that does no harm).
4. Done. (Close Karabiner-Elements.)

If you still want to have an escape key that you can still access when you need it, you can then, for instance, remap “F11” to “escape.” This way, you would have to press “fn” + “F11” to execute “Esc.”

This is strange: I’m encountering the same issue now: Disabling “Esc” on the Touch Bar via Karabiner-Elements works fine, but the “Fn” key on the keyboard doesn’t work anymore as long as “Apple Internal Keyboard” is enabled in the “Devices” section. It’s strange because when I wrote my initial post, everything worked flawlessly—which is why I suggested mapping “F11” to “Esc” in the first place.

Unrelated to this, I just discovered that it’s possible to map “Esc” to “vk_none” (instead of, say, “left_shift”) in Karabiner-Elements, which disables the key altogether.

Im going crazy here. I unintentionally stroke the esc key on the touch bar all day, canceling all kinds of tasks I didn't even know was possible. It's super annoying. When searching online for help, almost all hits are about idiots people complaining that Apple removed the esc key.

If anyone know of terminal commands to take more control over the touch bar, than just modifying the 4 rightmost buttons, please share!

PS: I've tried with 4 layers of electrical tape over the area of the touch bar that shows the esc key. That doesn't work. The touch bar still senses touching! 😐

I'm also having this problem ... it's way too easy to accidentally brush the esc key and it's really hard to stop doing it (in my case untraining decades of use of Apple keyboards and using the esc key constantly and intuitively).

There's another thread here http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2016-mbp-touch-bar-pressing-the-esc-button-b y-accident.2016358/ which has about half the people with the same problem and half the people complaining that we're just "holding it wrong".

Apple should come up with a checkbox in the keyboard menu to de-sensitise that key somehow.

Also note that the hitbox for the esc key is much bigger that the button appears. You can easily brush the area to the right of it and still set it off.

I got my new late 2016 MBPro 13" (a/Touchbar) shortly before Christmas and was not very happy. Mainly because of the touchbar. While typing, I keep accidentally hitting the ESC Button. At first I thought that was a design flaw, but after inspecting the problem I found this:

The ESC Button goes off, if you only barely touch it from the left side! This does not happen if You touch it from the right side.

It works in recovery mode: This behavior does not happen in Recovery-Mode. There the button acts only if pressed directly.

What's crazy is that I went to write a reply, and just NOW hit the ESC key by accident. I really love this computer, at least so far, but this is the single thing that is driving me insane. Apple, please address it, it's clearly a software fix, so that's the good news.

I am also going insane here. Please please please let us change the position of the escape key, or disable it. My middle finger brushes it constantly throughout the day, and has lead to lost work countless times now.

Good as far as it goes: I can map ESC to something harmless (and can also map another key to be ESC).

But enabling “No product name, Product Type 0x8600” disables the whole touch bar (which I need for things like brightness and volume).

So I have to revert to normal operation (by quitting Karabiner-Elements).

Anyone else have this problem?

Hi,

the Karabiner-Elements Mod works perfectly well. Maybe You have done something wrong in one of the other tabs (Devices). I do have another issue: Pressing FN does not bring up the function keys on the Touchbar. Anyone knows why?

Regards,

Rainer

With “Apple Internal Keyboard” enabled the function key does not work for me either.

But with “No product name, Product Type 0x8600” enabled the whole touch bar is disabled. I did not change any other Karabiner-Elements Mod setting, and presumable we are both using MacOS 10.12.3? If so, I must have some other incompatible MacOS setting.

Solved my problem: for this to work the Touch Bar needs to be set to the default: App Controls with Control Strip in System Preferences (a pity, because I prefer the Expanded Control Strip 😠). But I could drag the Siri button off 🙂.

I mapped the Esc key to fn and for some counterintuitive reason, the esc key is disabled and the fn key works! But if I open Karabiner-Elements back up, it stops working. Maybe this is the reason that your original mapping stopped working? Just an idea.

nbevan, I think you might have something wrong with your Karabiner installation. I did exactly what was suggested in the post and it all works fine. I did have to uncheck/recheck the Touchbar entry before the utility started to handle the esc events correctly.

Mapped actual ESC to caps lock which is a setting I meant to do for a while either way, and all is great now except that some space on touch bar is wasted. I think I can live with that, but would rather make it show some info instead.

I just purchased a 13" MBPro. And have the same issue. The darn touch bar gets smacked when typing quickly. It's so simple for Apple to fix, just a bit of logic. If someone is typing on their keyboard (metrics which the system's monitors have available to them), then require that any icon touched on the touch bar have a 0.5 second or more 'press' to activate. That way a slight brush against the icon in the touch bar, when typing quickly, wouldn't activate the bar. And for the escape key, alway require a 0.5 to 0.75 second press to activate.

Darn simple yet they won't implement it!

Thanks, this sorta does the trick. You can still assign F11 (or any function key) to escape and still have the 'Fn' key working by disabling 'Apple Internal Keyboard'.