Apple was working on pressure-sensitive touchscreen for Touch Bar on MacBooks

Apple has been working on a pressure-sensitive touchscreen for the Touch Bar, the screen that replaces the function keys on recent models of MacBook Pro laptops. Apple has filed a patent application for this.

The patent application , which came online Thursday and which PatentlyApple found , does not describe why Apple would want to make the touch screen of the Touch Bar pressure sensitive, but mainly describes the way in which this is done. The pressure sensitive layer is on both sides of the screen itself; the top layer is between the surface glass and the screen, the bottom layer is below the screen.

The patent application dates from March 2019. Apple was working on this at the time, but whether that is still the case is unknown. Since then, only new MacBook Pro models have appeared with the Touch Bar, but other laptops and Apple products don’t have the feature. For years, the manufacturer put pressure-sensitive touchscreens in the Apple Watch under the name Force Touch and in iPhones under the name 3D Touch , but they disappeared just last year.

The trackpad of laptops does work with pressure sensitivity. Apple recently released its new MacBook Pro with its own M1-soc, which also includes the Touch Bar. However, it is not pressure sensitive. Apple uses the Touch Bar to display controls in apps, such as volume keys or adjusting certain settings.