Developer Makes MacBook Pro Touch Bar Work on Windows 10

BY Mahit Huilgol

Published 25 Jul 2019

Touch screen laptops are in the market for quite some time but they are yet to go mainstream. Apple tried to offer a compromise between the touch screen and a traditional one by introducing Touch Bar on the MacBook Pro. Touch Bar replaced the function key and offered different functionality for different apps. Now, a developer has made Touch Bar useful on MacBook Pro running Windows.

Most of us use Bootcamp to install Windows on our Mac. This lets us switch between the operating systems and enjoy best of both the worlds. However, some functionalities like TouchID are specifically meant for macOS and will not work on Windows. A developer with Twitter handle imbushuo has ported Touch Bar functionality to work with Windows 10. The Touch Bar on Windows 10 will let you toggle between apps instantaneously.

You need to keep a few things in mind In order to make the Touch Bar appear on your MacBook Pro. Firstly, you need to use a kernel driver that is built specifically for this purpose. As per the developer, one can connect with the TouchBar as a USB or a USB Display device. The developer chooses a USBCCGP driver to switch the display configurations on Windows and made sure it supported FrameBuffer transfer.

That being said, the Touch Bar suffers from several issues when used with Windows 10. Some users have reported battery drain issues while others are not able to use connectivity options like Bluetooth or WiFi. Do you fancy using Touch Bar on Windows 10? If yes then head over to the GitHub repository and download it.