The Flexbar brings back a much-missed MacBook feature

Many MacBook Pro owners still lament the elimination of the Touch Bar – the touch-sensitive strip of dynamic icons that was above the keyboard. The Flexbar is a third-party attempt to revive the idea.

Instead of integrating the Touch Bar into the laptop itself, the Flexbar is an external peripheral that plugs into the USB-C port of a PC or laptop. And yes, that means it works with both Windows systems and Macs. In fact, the company claims it’s compatible with any USB-enabled device, including iPads and phones, although this is more limited when it comes to mobile devices.

Similar to the Touch Bar, the Flexbar is designed to be application sensitive. For example, open Photoshop and the display may change to a selection of brushes for you to choose from. Open Spotify and it switches to volume controls and track skip buttons.

ENIAC, the company behind the Flexbar, also seems to have learned from some of Apple’s mistakes. Rather than strictly controlling what you can do with the Touch Strip, everything is made user-customizable, allowing you to choose which buttons appear when you open a particular application.

It will also offer a plugin marketplace, meaning you can download a range of predefined shortcuts for popular apps like the Adobe suite, web browsers and the Microsoft Office apps without having to create all the shortcuts yourself.

For more advanced users, there’s Macro Recording, which allows you to record repetitive keyboard/mouse click sequences, allowing you to perform repetitive tasks with the press of a virtual key.

Flexbar specifications and price

The Flexbar is a thin strip of display measuring 250 x 7mm, which is approximately the size of the Touch Bar display. For comparison: a MacBook Pro keyboard is about 280 mm wide. The AMOLED screen has a resolution of 2,170 x 60 pixels and of course offers full-touch support.

The device weighs 72g, meaning you’d hardly notice it in a laptop bag, although the included stand doubles the weight.

It is currently being offered through Kickstarter at various prices. At the time of writing, the cheapest way to purchase it was the Founders Edition, which costs $119 (excluding shipping). The company will ship to multiple countries including the US, Canada and the UK

The company expects the product to ship in February 2025, which is a relatively short timeline for a Kickstarter project.

The big question is whether the Touch Strip concept has had its day, two years after Apple stopped producing MacBooks with Touch Bars.

There are now several similar alternatives on the market, including the Stream Deck series. The Stream Deck+, for example, offers eight customizable buttons with an LCD screen underneath, as well as a touch strip and dial to control various applications.

The recently launched Logitech MX Creative Console also offers a customizable LCD keyboard with nine different keys, as well as a separate control knob that allows you to fine-tune in software like Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Pro.

The Touch Bar was unique when Apple first introduced it on MacBook Pro laptops. The Flexbar, on the other hand, enters a highly competitive market.