Has anyone ever managed to remove the touchbar from an old macbook and replace it with a row of physical keys?
@flauschzelle accessing those keyboards at all is a pain (they're under the entire computer and riveted to the case) so that sounds like an excercise in frustration, and also the chip that runs the touchbar also does important system stuff and would probably become very unhappy
@noiob
Or any tips for just removing the backlight from the touchbar maybe? I don't care if it stays dark, as long as it keeps staying dark when it goes into "standby" then.
@flauschzelle no idea, beyond hardware modification ofc
if it helps, you can apparently remove most things on the touch bar, it'll at least flicker less then https://www.idownloadblog.com/2023/03/09/how-to-disable-touch-bar-macbook-pro/
you could put tape over it albeit that might put pressure on your screen with Apple's famously tight tolerances
obvs you can use a MacBook while it's closed with an external screen connected, if that's an option
@noiob
Thanks, I'll have a look at this.. though I'm not sure if removing things in software will do anything about the "flickering"... it's flashing bright white every few seconds *when it's in standby*, so that has nothing to do with the content shown on the touchbar's screen.
@flauschzelle oh, my bad, somehow I thought the backlight was flickering, not the LCD
@noiob
I don't know which light it is exactly 🤷♀️
@noiob @flauschzelle iirc it’s oled and not lcd
@uint8_t @flauschzelle well that certainly narrows it down
@flauschzelle I'm afraid that's not possible because the Touch Bar is an OLED display. There's no backlight, just pixels that may or may not emit light.
According to iFixit it's impossible to remove the Touch Bar without breaking it into pieces. https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Touch+Bar+Teardown/73480
There is a reverse-engineering video that mostly deals with the MIPI-DSI display data: https://hackaday.com/2024/01/23/reverse-engineering-the-apple-touch-bar-screen/
But it also shows a breakout board, which is this KiCad project: https://gitlab.com/yukidama/schlitzblende/-/tree/main/NXP-Breakout/Hardware/Bob
@flauschzelle The Chinese version of the video is basically the same, except that it also shows some bits of Apple's original repair documentation starting at 1:09, which is not shown in the English version: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1494y1w7jn/
I guess with all this low level information available, it should be possible to cut some lines in the flex PCB cable so that the OLED does not have the power it needs to light up, but the controller still thinks that it's there, so MacOS won't complain.
@noiob
Urgs, that's what I suspected :/
So it seems I'm gonna have to throw away a laptop that otherwise works fine, just because it's built to not be repairable?
*sigh* I know why I would never have bought this thing (I literally only have it because I got it for free).
Anyone who is not bothered by flickering lights wanna swap against an equally old non-touchbar macbook? 😅