Miss Apple’s Touch Bar? Check out the Kickstarter campaign for the Flexbar

I was a fan of the late, lamented (well, by some, anyway) Touch Bar. Now there’s a Kickstarter campaign to introduce its kinda-successor.

Here’s how it’s described in the Kickstart campaign: The discontinuation of the original Touch Bar didn’t mean the concept was flawed—it simply wasn’t taken far enough to reach its full. There’s something undeniable itself: the potential for a customizable, adaptive interface that could streamline workflows was immense.

We start by tackling usability and enhancing the physical experience to make Flexbar a joy to use in every way. Its compact, sleek, and portable design ensures plug-and-play seamlessly with desktops, laptops, iPads, phones, and even MacBook Pro.

Flexbar isn’t just a static strip of keys—it’s a fully customizable tool adapted to fit any scenario. From content creators managing Adobe Premiere timelines to streamers controlling OBS layouts or gamers executing complex in-game macros, Flexbar adapts to you.

Yet, Flexbar is more than just a shortcut keypad—it’s a deeply integrated extension toolbar for your most-used apps. With its third-party API support, Flexbar provides advanced, native-like controls for those highly interactive professional software applications. Using our JavaScript-based plugin SDK, you can easily implement almost any functionality on the Flexbar with your own integrated third-party APIs.

Flexbar learns to automatically switch between relevant interfaces according to your current task window. You can record and recreate your favorite layout with the Workspace function—getting started in a blink.

About the Touch Bar

In case you’re not aware of the history of the Touch Bar, Apple added it to its laptops in 2016, specifically the 13 and 15-inch MacBook Pros. The hardware feature was introduced as a sort of 21st-century replacement to the familiar row of function keys that exist on almost all laptop and desktop computers. It was a controversial feature that Apple removed when it debuted its 2021 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros.

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