MacBook Pro Touch Bar frozen
Symptoms
- If the Touch Bar on your Mac is unresponsive or delayed when pressed
- If your Touch Bar is blank with no video
Solutions
Soft Checks
- Restart your Mac. Wait till the unit is powered back on before testing the Touch Bar again.
- Check for any damage to LCD of Touch Bar. Sometimes any cracks or damage to Touch Bar will be small, and possibly hard to see. Shine a light over it to check for any small cracks or breaks.
Refresh Touch Bar from Activity Monitor
- Open Activity Monitor from Applications > Utilities or search for it in Spotlight
- Click the search bar and type "TouchBarServer"
- Force quit this process. This should refresh your Touch Bar by going blank and returning to its default view.
Reset NVRAM
NVRAM (nonvolatile random-access memory) is a small amount of memory that your Mac uses to store certain settings and access them quickly. PRAM (Parameter RAM) stores similar information, and the steps for resetting NVRAM and PRAM are the same.
Reset SMC
The SMC (System Management Controller) is responsible for these and other low-level functions on Intel-based Mac computers:
- Responding to presses of the power button
- Responding to the display lid opening and closing on Mac notebooks
- Battery management
- Thermal management
- Ambient light sensing
- Keyboard backlighting
A step by step guide can be found here: TS1000 - Reset SMC
Advanced (Not suggested for new users)
- Open Terminal from Spotlight, or Applications > Utilities
- Type sudo pkill TouchBarServer and hit Return
- This should force quit the Touch Bar
-
If this command still hasn't resolved the issue, attempt killall ControlStrip and hit Return