2016–2017 Touch Bar MacBook Pro (T1): working Touch Bar, camera and light sensor on Omarchy (+ keyboard-only fallback)

[seatrips]

Update (2026-09-30): the real Touch Bar works now, even after a full-disk install that wiped the T1 firmware. The T1 can be revived from Linux without macOS, and I now have the Touch Bar (hold Fn for F1–F12), the FaceTime camera, and the ambient light sensor with automatic brightness. The repo is now a step-by-step guide: https://github.com/seatrips/macbook-pro-t1-touchbar-linux. Details in this comment.

The keyboard-only setup below is still available as ./install.sh --keyd-fallback, for anyone who can't revive the T1 or doesn't want the Touch Bar.

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Original post:

On 2016–2017 Touch Bar MacBook Pros (T1 chip, applespi keyboard) the Touch Bar stays blank under Omarchy, so there's no Esc, no F1–F12 and no volume/brightness keys. Fn doesn't reach Hyprland either.

This does not fix the Touch Bar. It puts those keys on the physical keyboard instead:

Keys	Does
Fn + 1 … 0, -, =	F1 … F12
Fn + ↑ / ↓	Volume
Fn + → / ←	Brightness
Fn + Backspace	Forward Delete
Caps Lock + Tab	Esc (Caps Lock still works on tap)

It also adds some touchpad tweaks: 4-finger swipe to switch workspace, natural scrolling, 2-finger tap for right click, and libinput quirks that ignore light brushes and palms.

How it works: applespi fnremap=7 makes Fn send Right Alt, and keyd turns that into an Fn layer. Gotcha: Omarchy loads applespi from the initramfs, so the modprobe option only survives a reboot after limine-mkinitcpio. The install script takes care of that.

Repo, with a one-command installer that backs up every file it replaces: https://github.com/seatrips/macbook-pro-t1-touchbar-linux

Tested on a MacBookPro14,3 (15", 2017). It should also work on the other Touch Bar models (13,x / 14,2 / 14,3), but I haven't tested them, so feedback is welcome.

[seatrips]

Update: the real Touch Bar works now, even after a full-disk install.

I thought a wiped T1 (05ac:1281, Recovery Mode) meant reinstalling macOS. It doesn't: niconistal/t1-revive rebuilds the T1 firmware from Linux alone (about 5 minutes, it fetches the Apple-signed data once). After that the chip boots as 05ac:8600 on every power-on.

On my MacBookPro14,3 I now have:

• Touch Bar: Esc, brightness, volume and media keys; hold Fn for F1–F12. The driver is Ronald Tschalär's apple-ibridge, patched for current kernels and set up with DKMS by creolben/macbook-t1-touchbar.
• FaceTime camera: works as soon as the T1 is running.
• Ambient light sensor + automatic brightness: apple-ib-als plus wluma, with a Super + Alt + B toggle. It survives a reboot.

The repo has been renamed and rewritten as a step-by-step guide: back up the T1 firmware, revive the T1, install the driver, then the Omarchy keyboard/touchpad settings. It also covers two gotchas I hit:

• The driver's boot-time handover script checks for a hard-coded HID device number, so after a revive the bar stays dark. There's a one-line fix.
• Any Fn remap has to go, because the driver switches to F1–F12 on the real Fn key.

👉 https://github.com/seatrips/macbook-pro-t1-touchbar-linux

The keyboard-only keyd setup from this post is still there as ./install.sh --keyd-fallback, for anyone who can't revive the T1 or doesn't want the Touch Bar.

Touch ID isn't supported by this driver. t1bridge says it supports it through fprintd, but it replaces the driver above, and I haven't tried it.