The touchbar is a nice feature of the Macbook when used as multimedia machine because it could be individually programmed. Unfortunately it has been abandoned may for reasons unknown to us. At least it starts now flickering at random intervals in my 2019 Macbook Pro. And nothing helps in the long-term
- resetting SMC
- restting NVRAM, PRAM
- terminal kill touchbar
- terminal kill control strip
- pmset hibernate mode
- upgrade to Sonoma
while only kill touchbar disables it immediately . Could it be a combined hardware / software issue?
- a slowly expanding battery moving the keyboard lid?
- some defect of the light sensor?
- a defect when starting the OLED display?
While I can’t fully exclude a minimal battery expansion after 200 cycles, the battery is still marked as OK in the system report. The flickering can be stopped by a bright light at the camera hole on top of the display so the second option is also unlikely.
With the Medium hack it is gone during daytime but still occurs sometimes during sleep which is annoying…
Completely disabling the touchbar is not possible (due to the ESC key), so the touchbar may need replacement as recommended by Apple. I am still exploring some other options eg improving the Medium hack with no result so far.