In 3 years of work laptop use I don't think I've ever once encountered an app that actually provides useful enough controls to depose my default function controls of
1. Mission control
2. Brightness down
3. Brightness up
4. Previous track
5. Play/pause
6. Next track
7. Volume down
8. Volume up
After experimenting with all of the apps I use every day to see what controls they could provide, I ended up just disabling the app-specific touchbar controls entirely and going with my defaults for every app.
I know it's personal preference how everyone likes their own machine configured, but as someone who gets zero value out of the OLED display, it's frustrating how vastly worse an experience it is than than it needs to be. The touch bar is clumsy with its zero touch feedback, so that I'm always accidentally pressing it with my fingertips when using the number row, and it drives me crazy. It's so much worse than the function keys that even if they fixed the utterly broken keyboard mechanism I would never buy a touchbar Macbook. Fortunately, Apple is making it a really easy decision, since their display panels aren't even close to being the best anymore, their core components are perennially outdated and overpriced, and MacOS has long been neglected. What else is there? The touchpad? I just use a high-end gaming mouse because it's about a billion times more precise and reliable.
That sounds like Quicksilver from a long time ago, I wonder what took its place. I know Spotlight took a lot of the filesearch features, but the UI automation and macro functionality were some real powerful stuff.
I don't see what you're saying the connection is to Quicksilver, but I believe the modern replacements are Alfred and LaunchBar. I have licenses for both but ended up sticking with LaunchBar for my MacOS machines because I don't need the more powerful automation features of Alfred.
Alfred+Dash have been an amazing improvement to my workflow. Type in "torch batch" and suddenly you have all the docs for Pytorch's Batchnorm functions right there.
If you're accidentally pressing it when hitting the number keys, your finger positions must be way off. It's not like the number keys are thin at all. Regarding the gaming mouse, if all you use the touchpad for is point and click a mouse is a decent replacement - that goes for all touchpads. I'd like to see you do three-finger-right-swipe or four-finger-pinch on a gaming mouse, though. :P
1. Mission control 2. Brightness down 3. Brightness up 4. Previous track 5. Play/pause 6. Next track 7. Volume down 8. Volume up
After experimenting with all of the apps I use every day to see what controls they could provide, I ended up just disabling the app-specific touchbar controls entirely and going with my defaults for every app.
I know it's personal preference how everyone likes their own machine configured, but as someone who gets zero value out of the OLED display, it's frustrating how vastly worse an experience it is than than it needs to be. The touch bar is clumsy with its zero touch feedback, so that I'm always accidentally pressing it with my fingertips when using the number row, and it drives me crazy. It's so much worse than the function keys that even if they fixed the utterly broken keyboard mechanism I would never buy a touchbar Macbook. Fortunately, Apple is making it a really easy decision, since their display panels aren't even close to being the best anymore, their core components are perennially outdated and overpriced, and MacOS has long been neglected. What else is there? The touchpad? I just use a high-end gaming mouse because it's about a billion times more precise and reliable.