Let’s be honest. When Apple killed the Touch Bar, half the world cheered and the other half—mostly the people who actually found creative ways to use that thin strip of OLED—shed a quiet tear. It was a weird era for the Mac. For years, we had this tiny, glowing rectangle sitting right above our keyboards, mostly used for scrubbing through YouTube videos or picking emojis. But then, developers got bored. Or maybe they just got inspired. They started making MacBook Pro Touch Bar games, and suddenly, your expensive productivity machine was a very expensive, very wide Game Boy.
It wasn't just a gimmick. Well, okay, it was totally a gimmick, but it was a fun one.
You bought a Pro for video editing. You bought it for coding. But late at night, when the spreadsheets got too heavy, you probably found yourself wondering if you could play Doom on that sliver of glass. Spoiler: You could. People did. And while the M3 and M4 chips have moved on to bigger and better things, there is a weirdly dedicated community still keeping these mini-games alive for those of us clinging to our Intel-based relics.
Why did anyone make games for a keyboard strip?
The Touch Bar was a solution looking for a problem. Apple wanted to reinvent the function row, but they didn't really tell anyone how to use it effectively. This created a vacuum. Developers like Graham Parks and others saw that 2170 x 60 pixel resolution and thought, "Yeah, I can fit a dinosaur in there."
It’s about the constraints.
Constraints breed creativity. When you only have a few dozen vertical pixels to work with, you can't make Call of Duty. You have to make something that relies on twitch reflexes or simple lateral movement. It’s digital minimalism at its most absurd. Most MacBook Pro Touch Bar games were side-scrollers or rhythm-based experiments. They didn't require a mouse. They didn't even require you to look at the main Retina display. You just stared at your fingers and hoped you didn't miss a beat.
The classics you can still actually play
If you still have a Touch Bar Mac, you aren't stuck with just boring volume sliders. There’s a whole catalog of stuff that ranges from "actually addictive" to "completely ridiculous."
💡 You might also like: Why Batman Arkham City Still Matters More Than Any Other Superhero Game
TouchBar Dino: The Chrome escapee
Everyone knows the Google Chrome dinosaur game. You lose Wi-Fi, you hit space, you jump over cacti. It’s a rite of passage. Way back in 2016, a developer brought this to the Touch Bar. It is arguably the most perfect use of the hardware. The cacti scroll from right to left, and you tap the bar to jump. Because the Touch Bar is so wide, you actually have a decent "runway" to see what’s coming. It feels natural. It feels like it belongs there.
Pac-Bar
Pac-Man on a horizontal line is a trip. Developed by Henry Franks, this version of the arcade classic stretches the maze into one long, continuous hallway. You use the arrow keys to move, but the action happens entirely on the Touch Bar. It’s claustrophobic. It’s difficult. It’s also a great way to look like you're working really hard while actually trying to outrun Blinky and Inky.
Touch Bar Lemmings
This one is pure nostalgia. Erik Olsson managed to get the tiny green-haired Lemmings to walk across the bar. You tap the bar to interact with them. If you grew up in the 90s, seeing those tiny sprites on your keyboard is enough to make you ignore your email inbox for at least twenty minutes. The sheer scale—or lack thereof—is impressive. They are tiny. Like, "squint-and-you'll-miss-them" tiny.
Nyan Cat
Is it a game? Not really. Is it essential? Absolutely. Having the Nyan Cat trail a rainbow across your keyboard while the "nyanyanyana" music plays (if you want it to) is the peak 2010s experience. It’s the ultimate "look what my computer can do" party trick that serves zero practical purpose.
The Technical Weirdness: How these games even work
Under the hood, the Touch Bar was basically a modified Apple Watch display. It ran on a variant of watchOS (the "BridgeOS"). This meant that when developers were writing MacBook Pro Touch Bar games, they weren't exactly writing for macOS in the traditional sense. They were sending UI elements to a secondary processor (the T1 or T2 chip).
This is why the performance was always so smooth. The games weren't fighting the CPU for resources. They had their own little sandbox to play in.
📖 Related: Will My Computer Play It? What People Get Wrong About System Requirements
But it also made things tricky. The Touch Bar doesn't have haptic feedback in the way the trackpad does. You're tapping on a flat piece of glass. For a game like TouchBar Pong, this is a nightmare for muscle memory. You have to rely entirely on visual cues. Some developers tried to solve this with sound effects, but mostly, you just had to get used to the "mushy" feeling of tapping glass instead of clicking a button.
Does anyone still care in 2026?
You'd think these games would be dead by now. Apple stopped putting the Touch Bar on new Pros years ago. The 13-inch MacBook Pro was the last holdout, and even that has been put out to pasture. But there’s a funny thing about Mac users: we keep our machines for a long time.
There are still millions of Touch Bar-equipped Macs in the wild.
Whether it's a student with a refurbished 2019 model or a designer who refuses to give up their Intel i9 heater, the hardware is still there. Projects like Pock (which puts your Dock in the Touch Bar) or BetterTouchTool keep the customization dream alive. BetterTouchTool, in particular, is the "god mode" for the Touch Bar. It allows you to create your own buttons, but it also allows you to run scripts that can effectively host mini-games or interactive widgets.
Honestly, the community is more about preservation now. It's like retro gaming but for a very specific five-year window of Apple history.
The Downside: Why it was doomed (pun intended)
The biggest hurdle for these games was the "gorilla arm" effect, or rather, the "craned neck" effect. To play a game on your Touch Bar, you have to look down. Away from the screen. Away from your posture-correct setup. It’s not ergonomic. After ten minutes of playing Space Is Key on your keyboard, your neck starts to remind you that you are, in fact, over thirty and should probably be looking at a monitor at eye level.
👉 See also: First Name in Country Crossword: Why These Clues Trip You Up
Also, Apple never officially supported a "Touch Bar App Store." To get these games, you usually have to go to GitHub, download a .zip file, and bypass a bunch of macOS security warnings because the developer didn't pay $99 for an Apple Developer license. It’s a grassroots movement, which is cool, but it also means it never hit the mainstream.
Getting started: How to turn your keyboard into a console
If you want to try this before you trade in your Mac for a Silicon model, here is the move:
- Check your model: Obviously, you need a MacBook Pro from 2016 to 2022. If you have an Air, you're out of luck.
- GitHub is your friend: Search for "Touch Bar games" on GitHub. Look for repositories by people like Grace Avery or Pietro Schirano.
- Security settings: You’ll likely need to go to System Settings > Privacy & Security and click "Open Anyway" after the first time you try to launch one of these apps.
- BetterTouchTool: If you want to get serious, buy a license for BetterTouchTool. It’s the best $20 you’ll spend on Mac software. It lets you import "presets" from other users, many of whom have built weird little games directly into the interface.
The Actionable Insight: Don't let your hardware go to waste
If you are rocking a Touch Bar Mac, stop using that strip just for brightness and volume. It’s a piece of history. Even if you just install the Nyan Cat app for a laugh, it makes the machine feel a bit more "yours" and a bit less like a corporate slab of aluminum.
Go download TouchBar Dino first. It’s the easiest to install and the most fun to play during a boring Zoom meeting where you don't have to take notes. Just make sure you aren't sharing your screen when you do it; there’s nothing more embarrassing than your boss seeing a 16-bit dinosaur jumping over a cactus on your keyboard while you’re supposed to be looking at Q4 projections.
The Touch Bar might be dead in Apple's eyes, but as long as the screens still light up, the games are still there, waiting for someone to tap on them.
Next Steps for You
- Check your MacBook's "About This Mac" to confirm you have an Intel or early M1/M2 model with a Touch Bar.
- Head over to GitHub and search for "Touch Bar Lemmings" to find the latest compiled releases.
- If you're a developer, look into the NSTouchBar documentation; it’s surprisingly easy to send simple sprite kits to that display even today.