Hide Your Mac’s Touch Bar With This Inexpensive App

If you ever find yourself tired of staring at your Mac’s Touch Bar, there’s hope. We’ve previously talked about different techniques you can use to disable it or blank it out entirely, but the best solution still costs around $11 to implement. Now, there’s a new app that promises to take the exact same approach for one-fourth the price. And it’s easy to use.

To get rid of your Touch Bar — which includes blanking it out and making sure that accidentally brushing your finger past that space does nothing — check out Hide My Bar. It’s a lightweight app that you can’t purchase via the Mac App Store, but it does come with a 10-day free trial so you can give it a whirl to confirm it works well for your needs.

Download and install, and the app’s icon will live in your Mac’s Menu bar in perpetuity (once you’ve also allowed the app to “control your computer” via the Accessibility menu in your Security & Privacy settings). While that’s normally a move you should think twice about when an app asks you for that kind of permission, it’s also the only way Hide My Bar can work its magic.

From there, all you have to do is launch the app, open up its preferences and set it to launch whenever you log into your system. After that, simply double-tap the Command key to hide and reveal your Touch Bar.

If you find that you’re missing a few controls on your Touch Bar when you go to conceal it on your Mac, Hide My Bar even comes with an option to virtually recreate a few of them. Enable “Display essential controls in the menu” within its preferences, and you’ll be able to click Hide My Bar’s icon to reveal virtual buttons for your screen’s brightness, your keyboard’s brightness, and your volume — including a mute button.

I didn’t think I’d enjoy Hide My Bar as much as I do, especially since I tend to prefer free apps whenever possible. For the price of a some value-menu french fries, however, Hide My Bar does a great job at its singular task: getting rid of your Touch Bar when you don’t want to mess with it and restoring it when you’re ready to be friends again.