This macOS App Might Actually Make Your MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar Useful

Pock Mac1 Credit: David Murphy / Life Hacker
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The Touch Bar is far from the most contentious feature of newer MacBook Pro models. But it’s also far from the most popular feature.

Mostly, that’s because many MacBook Pro users simply don’t take advantage of it. And to be fair, unless you customize the Touch Bar shortcuts, it won’t be the most useful thing on your Mac notebook (a few neat tricks notwithstanding). But a simple app could actually help you get some use out of it.

No matter what you do on your Mac, there’s a good chance that you use the Dock — that little menu bar at the bottom of the display that shows your pinned or frequently used apps.

Many users prefer to have macOS automatically hide or show the Dock, which saves some screen real estate but adds an extra step to access it. But a simple app called Pock, created by Italian developer Pierluigi Galdi, does away with that inconvenience by allowing you to access the Dock from the Touch Bar.

That means that you won’t sacrifice any precious screen real estate. But it also means that you’ll be able to easily access your Dock without needing to hover your cursor over the bottom of the display.

The app supports a few other cool features, too. You’ll be able to see notification badges and the Now Playing widget on the Touch Bar, too. The Touch Bar Dock won’t affect your standard function keys, either — such as Escape, brightness or volume.

In addition, you can also display important system information on your Touch Bar. That includes Wi-Fi status, battery indicator, and the current time. While not technically a part of the dock, this at-a-glance access could be useful to users who frequently use fullscreen mode.

It’s fully customizable to your needs and the developer has promised upcoming support for more widgets and toggles in future versions. While there are a few bugs with the app, none of them are anywhere near a dealbreaker.

In short, it’s a simple way to get a bit more functionality out of your Touch Bar — and may prove to be especially useful to users who simply don’t use the Touch Bar at all beyond function keys.

Pock is available to download from the developer’s website. You can also view its Github page here. The app requires a MacBook Pro with Touch Bar running macOS 10.12.2 or later.

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