Touch Bar Sleep Timeout Options

I absolutely love BTT. The one feature I'd like to see in the preferences would add functionality for users to select how long it takes for the touch bar to go to sleep. I've noticed that when I'm using Final Cut Pro and watching a clip, the touch bar sleeps after 70 seconds. It's annoying, because to press the escape key or any other selection on the touch bar I have to tap it twice.

I'm simply asking whether it's possible to create a preference to set the touch bar to sleep at user-selected intervals. There's some times I'd like it to stay open permanently. Other times, 5-10 minutes is a more reasonable selection.

Thanks much. Hope some folks have some suggestions or feel this would be a helpful feature for them, too.

Anybody? Anybody? Bueller? Beuller?

macOS System Prefs → Keyboard → "Turn Keyboard backlight off after XXX of inactivity"
This toggles the Touch Bar too.

Thanks for replying to this thread! I appreciate it. Currently I'm on a maxed-out 2019 MBP running Mohave. I tested the solution you came up with, and, unfortunately it doesn't work that way. The selections a user is allowed for the keyboard backlight timeout runs from 5 sec to 5 minutes. I set it at 5 minutes and watched to see what happens—the touch bar still times out at 70 seconds. At a 5 second setting the keyboard backlight does indeed go off, but the touch bar remains lit. That's just my experience. YMMV

Also, your solution doesn't really address the problem I want to solve; namely the ability to force the touch bar to remain lit all the time for certain applications. For example, when I'm editing video in Final Cut Pro I'll be reviewing a certain clip. After 70 seconds the touch bar times out and sleeps. In order to access my touch bar (or even the stupid esc key), I have to touch it twice. It sounds petty that I'm complaining about doing this, but . . . after hundreds of times throughout the day it becomes tedious. I shouldn't HAVE to press anything twice to simply press 'escape.'

This is why I'd like this feature in BTT.

Unfortunately I don't know of a way to prevent the Touch Bar sleep. I think this is intentional to prevent OLED burn-in.

Andreas! Thanks for the reply.

I had this same thought, but wouldn't it be nice if Apple gave users the option to set it from, say, 30 seconds to 10 minutes?

There's got to be a way to get into the guts of the OS where the 70 second timeout had been originally determined and set.

I'll keep searching for solutions until Apple figures out that no one really wants to press a non-haptic plastic strip twice to access the esc key.

Great app, by the way, Andreas. My Mac is actually a zillion times more productive by what you've produced here.

PEACE!

I don't think there is any simple setting that could do it right now.

If you want to look into the internals, there are three private frameworks relevant for the Touch Bar:
DFRBrightness.framework (I think this is the one that could help here)
DFRDisplay.framework
DFRFoundation.framework

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Thank you. I'll check these out.

Good luck! I think the DFRBrightness one is the best candidate. It seems to contain some methods for burn-in prevention and turning displays on /off.

I'd be really careful with this though. I believe a 10 minute value would probably cause long term burn in if it is set to that the whole time. (Which is also why I don't want to do any experiments with this - I don't want to be responsible for people ruining their Touch Bars....)

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@Andreas_Hegenberg Have you found a way to modify DFRBrightness so that touchbar never sleeps? I've been annoyed by this issue too

I hate to exacerbate this massive internet pile-on (hehe) Andreas, but I'm both reckless and stupid enough to try and change this myself. I'm on the latest Ventura 13.2.

Now, I've found the location of the frameworks you listed, and I have SIP disabled completely as I figured that would come into it. (This isn't my daily driver either, not that that would honestly stop me). Looking inside the contents of the DFR*, etc framework packages, there doesn't seem to be much knocking about in there, just a couple of small .plists in each one - and while there are a few numeric variables in there, if they relate to the timeout of the Touch Bar's brightness, they're well hidden at least from me.

Now, may I possibly just set what little dignity I have left and beg you just for a tip or two? Like, am I not looking in the right place, or through the right lens? Let's just say one of the entries in the plist was the timeout value - would it just be a case of editing that .plist? As a non-dev, I only have the vaguest, foggiest idea of what Private Frameworks are, let alone how they are actually used. I wouldn't expect them to hold values such as this but you are obviously a world-class expert and that's before I even begin to try to gas you up.

Anyway, it's my birthday on the 19th. I'm going to be 41 and I've achieved precisely nothing with my life, certainly nothing on the order of magnificence as BetterTouchTool and its siblings. Of course a man of my age shouldn't even mention his birthday, let alone on a forum of would-be friends in perhaps the longest shot ever attempted to obtain forbidden knowledge from a Mac guru, so perhaps you might find it in your heart, out of sheer pity and second-hand embarrassment, to let this old heap of human junk find a way to stop that infernal Touch Bar from skiving off its ONE job?! I don't care about OLED burn in, besides the task I want to put it to use for is as a live spectrum analyser (via AVTouchBar). I even downloaded Jiggler, but Apple must be real sadists because they just do NOT want people to have the ultimate control over their machines. It bugs me. In particular because this MBP of mine, that I am now attempting to put to a secondary use, never had a real chance thanks to some really poor design decisions by Apple. That keyboard debacle, the battery has died now as well, and there's some issue with the display.

If I can get the Touch Bar to stay on as long as I - you know, just the person who scrimped and saved and borrowed to buy the ruddy computer, to  I am lower than a parasite inside the lower bowel of a worm - like it to, then at least this Mac would go on to have a useful secondary life, as a miraculously pretty looking keyboard. And the Touch Bar would actually make a user happy, I know something that feature hasn't been given the opportunity to do much of, and of course without BTT it basically never would.

Anyway ... I meant to write a longer message, but I hope this doesn't come off as too terse.

Yours only intermittently pleased with my Touch Bar,

Chris