Let’s be honest. When Apple first slapped that glowing OLED strip onto the MacBook Pro in 2016, most people used it for exactly two things: scrubbing through YouTube videos and accidentally hitting the Siri button when they meant to hit Delete. It was polarizing. It was expensive. It was, for many professional users, a total gimmick that replaced the tactile comfort of physical F-keys with a slippery, glowing bar of glass.
But then the developers showed up.
The Mac Touch Bar games scene is one of the most delightfully bizarre subcultures in tech history. We aren't talking about "AAA" titles here. You won't find Call of Duty running in a $2170 \times 60$ pixel resolution. Instead, what you find is a collection of "micro-games" that treat that tiny strip of screen like a digital playground. It’s basically the modern equivalent of programmers making the office printer spit out ASCII art, or running Doom on a pregnancy test. It is pure, unadulterated "because I can" energy.
The Best (and Most Ridiculous) Mac Touch Bar Games You Can Actually Play
If you still have an Intel-based MacBook Pro or one of the early M1 models that kept the bar, you’re sitting on a niche gaming console. Seriously.
Take TouchBarDino. It’s the simplest thing in the world. You know that dinosaur game that pops up in Google Chrome when your internet dies? Someone ported it to the Touch Bar. You tap the bar to jump over cacti. That’s it. But there is something strangely addictive about playing a game on a surface that was meant for "productivity" while you're supposed to be finishing a spreadsheet. It’s the ultimate stealth gaming experience.
Then there is Pac-Bar. This one is a legitimate technical feat. It manages to cram a horizontal version of the classic Pac-Man maze into that thin strip. You use the arrow keys to move, and the ghosts chase you across the entire width of your keyboard. It’s cramped. It’s difficult. It’s also kinda brilliant.
The Legend of Touch Bar Lemmings
If you grew up in the 90s, you know Lemmings. The little green-haired creatures that walk blindly off cliffs unless you give them a job. Developer Erik Olsson decided that the Touch Bar was the perfect environment for these suicidal pixels.
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In Touch Bar Lemmings, the creatures walk back and forth across the OLED strip. You tap the bar to change their task. It’s mindless, but it looks incredible. The vibrant colors of the OLED make those tiny sprites pop in a way that feels premium, even if the gameplay is fundamentally chaotic. It’s probably the best example of using the hardware for something totally useless yet completely charming.
Why Did Developers Even Bother?
You might wonder why anyone would spend hours coding a game for a 60-pixel-high screen. Most of these creators aren't making money. These games are almost always free on GitHub.
It comes down to the "Hacker Ethos." When Apple released the API for the Touch Bar, they had very strict guidelines. They wanted it to be an extension of the keyboard, not a secondary display. They specifically told developers not to use it for animations or fun stuff.
Naturally, developers did the exact opposite.
Creating Mac Touch Bar games became a way to protest Apple's rigid design philosophy. It was a digital "we're here, and we're weird." When someone figured out how to put a tiny, playable piano on the bar (TouchBarPiano), it wasn't just a toy. It was a proof of concept. It showed that the hardware was capable of low-latency interaction that Apple hadn't even considered.
The Technical Weirdness of 2170 Pixels
Coding for this thing is a nightmare. Honestly.
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The aspect ratio is completely broken compared to every other screen on earth. To make a game work, you have to rethink physics. Most games rely on verticality—gravity pulling things down. On the Touch Bar, gravity doesn't really exist because there's no "down" to fall to. Everything has to move horizontally.
This led to a surge in "Runner" style games. Spacebar, for example, is a game where you have to dodge incoming obstacles by jumping. It’s basically a side-scroller with no ceiling. You’re just a block of pixels trying to survive in a very thin world.
Nyan Cat: The Peak of the Gimmick
We cannot talk about this topic without mentioning the Nyan Cat Touch Bar. It isn't even a game, really. You just install it, and the rainbow-trailing cat runs across your keyboard forever.
Why does this matter? Because it became the face of the Touch Bar. When people asked, "What can that little screen do?" the answer was almost always "Look, I can make a cat fly through space on it." It proved that users valued personality over the "optimized workflows" Apple was selling.
The M1 and M2 Shift: Is the Party Over?
Apple eventually listened to the critics. The 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros (M1 Pro, M2, M3, and beyond) scrapped the Touch Bar in favor of physical keys. The tech world cheered. Most professionals wanted their Esc key back.
However, this move turned these games into "abandonware" collectibles. If you have an M2 MacBook Pro 13-inch, you're part of the last generation that can natively run these experiments.
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- Compatibility Note: Most of these games are built using Swift and require specific permissions to "take over" the bar.
- Battery Life: Surprisingly, running these games doesn't kill your battery. The OLED strip is efficient, and the games are so lightweight that the CPU barely notices they’re running.
- The "Esc" Problem: In many of these games, the digital Escape button disappears. You have to force-quit the app to get your regular keyboard back. It’s a bit of a mess, but that’s part of the charm.
How to Get Started (Before the Hardware Dies)
If you want to try this out, don't look in the Mac App Store. Apple’s guidelines are so strict that most of these gems are banned or simply not submitted. You’ll need to head to GitHub or independent developer sites.
- Touch Bar Space Fight: A two-player game where you and a friend sit on opposite sides of the laptop and try to shoot each other's ships. It’s the most social use of a laptop keyboard ever designed.
- Doom: Yes, someone put Doom on the Touch Bar. It is unplayable. It looks like a smear of red and brown pixels. But it exists, and that’s a win for humanity.
- Golf: There is a tiny golf game where you judge the power of your swing based on a sliding scale on the bar. It’s actually quite relaxing.
Most of these require you to "Open Anyway" in your Security & Privacy settings because they aren't signed by "identified developers." That's the risk you take for the sake of art.
The Cultural Legacy of a Failed Feature
It’s easy to call the Touch Bar a failure. In terms of mass-market utility, it probably was. But in terms of creative expression, it gave us something unique. It was a bridge between the physical world of typing and the fluid world of iOS.
The Mac Touch Bar games represent a specific era of Apple history where things got a little too experimental for their own good. They remind us that tech doesn't always have to be productive. Sometimes, a $3,000 laptop is just a very expensive way to play a 1-bit version of Snake.
Actionable Steps for the Curious
If you’re still rocking a MacBook with a Touch Bar, don't let that screen space go to waste.
- Download "Pock": It’s not a game, but it lets you put your entire Dock inside the Touch Bar. It frees up screen real estate and makes the bar actually useful.
- Check GitHub for "Touch Bar Games": Look for repositories by developers like Grace Avery or Erik Olsson. These are the gold standards.
- Clean your Bar: Since you’ll be tapping it more than usual, keep a microfiber cloth handy. Fingerprint smudges on an OLED strip are way more visible than on plastic keys.
- Watch your CPU: If a game is poorly coded (which some are), it might trigger the "WindowServer" process to spike. If your fans start screaming, kill the app immediately.
The Touch Bar might be fading into the sunset, but for those who know where to look, it’s still a weird, bright, and incredibly fun place to play. Grab these apps now while the hardware still exists to run them. Once these MacBooks die, this entire genre of gaming will likely vanish into the "remember when" folders of the internet.
Next Steps for Your Mac: Check your "About This Mac" to see if you have an Intel or Apple Silicon chip. If you're on an Intel Mac, you can even use "Touch Bar Simulator" to run these games on your actual screen, even if you don't have the physical hardware. For those with the bar, download Pac-Bar first—it is the most stable and well-realized version of the concept. Just remember to save your work before you start playing; these indie apps are known to occasionally freeze the Touch Bar's control strip.