Change Your Touchpad With These Creative Apps and Games

Posted on July 13, 2018 by resourcefulman

I don’t know about you, but I still doubt Apple’s Touch Bar. The most common issue I get from this is the accidental pressing of the virtual back button in my browser when I try to press a number key. That, and I mainly use the Touch Bar to adjust the brightness and volume of my MacBook. (I might need to tweak more useful keys .)

That said, the Touch Bar is certainly a pleasure to look at, and a number of creative developers have taken it upon themselves to create a unique … experience … for this tiny screen-on-keyboard. If you’re like me and the touchpad is more fun to watch than good, consider bringing it to life with some of these clever additions:

Pac-Bar

Yes, you can now play Pac-Man – or a rough copy of Pac-Man – right on your MacBook’s touchpad. Use the ARROW KEYS to move Pac-Man around, eat ghosts and sink back into nostalgia for it all.

TouchBarPong

If you want to be even more old-school than Pac-Man , how about pong ? Move the paddle back and forth across the touchpad and try not to let the ball go past you. Repeat as necessary.

Lemmings

While it would be great if someone actually made a version of Lemmings for the Touch Bar, the best you can get right now is just make them walk and block each other. They are much more fun when they fall off the rocks.

Touch bar space flight

People love bringing older games to the Touch Bar. Here’s Space Flight , a classic game similar to Gradius, “move your ship up and down and kill objects as they fly at you . ” It seems, as it were, something like.

TouchBarDino

If you prefer a dinosaur over a spaceship and avoid cacti instead of shooting aliens, this homage to Chrome ” your browser is off ” game can be played right on the touchpad.

Run Mario Run

Likewise, you can make Mario jump over Goombas – although we join the Reddit commenters who are skeptical about downloading random files from Dropbox instead of, say, Github.

Party parrot

As far as the Touch Bar is concerned, all ideas are good ideas, right?

TouchBreakout

If Pong is too exhausting for you – or you don’t want to deal with the stress of bumping into another person – how about some adorable single-player bricklaying game?

Electronic touch panel

While this is just a small demo, I love its ability: Who is the first to develop a full-fledged casino game (or just slots) for the Touch Bar?

Nyancat touch panel

Just.

TouchFart

Just.

Knight TouchBar 2000 / Cylon TouchBar

Whether you want the moving red lights of the KITT Knight Rider or the moving red lights of the Cylon, the Touch Bar app is for you. Hello, television from the late 1970s – early 1980s. (Hopefully someone will make an updated version for the Battlestar Galactica reboot …)