TouchBar: disable status bar items with a touch

TouchBar 01

When I first took TouchBar for a spin, I have to admit I was a bit confused. I understood the fact that the tweak allowed you to invoke a quick toggles bar near the status bar; that much was clear. What I didn’t understand was a setting found in the preferences for the tweak that allows you to “enable items.”

Well, apparently, this enable items toggle lets you touch the actual icons present in the primary status bar. For example, if you touch the little signal bars in the upper left-hand corner of your iPhone’s screen, you can engage AirPlane mode. If you touch the Airplane icon, you can turn off Airplane mode. This works for most of the items that you’ll find in the status bar.

This is one of the few tweaks that I’ve run across that lets you interact with actual items in the status bar. Remember, these items are insanely small, so it’s a little odd and a bit intriguing all at once. Have a look at our video walkthrough after the jump to see what I mean.

Head over to the stock Settings app after installing TouchBar to find its preference panel. There, you’ll be asked to assign an Activator gesture and you’ll find a section for rearranging toggles. Once you assign the Activator gesture, invoke TouchBar, and you should see a bar containing toggles appear at the top of the page. This bar can be swiped to view additional toggles, and you’ll find playback controls if you swipe in the opposite direction.

To dismiss the TouchBar, you’ll need to press the Home button. Using the same invoking gesture for Activator won’t allow you to dismiss TouchBar, and I found this to be a bit annoying.

But the real surprise to be had with regard to this tweak is the fact that you can, as mentioned, actually touch the elements in the status bar to toggle those features. This option can be turned off using the tweak’s settings, and you’ll likely want to do that since trying to touch the super-small elements in the status bar reliably is kind of difficult.

TouchBar 02

TouchBar is available right now on Cydia’s ModMyi repo for $0.99. It’s yet another toggle tweak amongst a deluge of such tweaks, but it does have the unique status bar feature to set it apart from the competition. Let me know what your thoughts are on TouchBar in the comments.