During use, the Touch Bar may have some errors such as not working, buttons do not respond,. When encountering some errors on the Touch Bar, the user can restart the process. Touch this, instead of having to restart the Mac or find repair tools. The following article will guide you how to restart the Touch Bar on macOS. Well the thing is that my Macbook Pro Retina, model: A1502 (mid 2014) need a keyboard replacement so i decided to make it my quarantine project and give him a little upgrade in the process, the actual setup of the macbook is: - 2,6 GHz Intel Core i5 2 cores. RAM: 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 - 256 SDD Flash drive. What thing do you recommend me to change? Follow the steps below to fix a frozen Touch Bar on your Mac. 1) Launch Activity Monitor from the Applications/Utilities folder. 2) Click the CPU tab near the top of the window. 3) Type “touchbarserver” in the search field near the top-right corner in order to narrow the list of running apps to just the Touch Bar process itself.
Terminal requires your password to complete the process and restart anything related to Touch Bar. It’s normal to not see the characters on the screen while you’re typing, so just press the Return. You can restart the Touch Bar through the Activity Monitor, which Apple’s website describes as “a kind of task manager that allows you see how apps and other processes are affecting your CPU, memory, energy, disk and network usage.”.
Find yourself searching how to wipe your Mac clean and restore it to factory settings? You may be interested in selling your computer and needing to delete all the contents of the hard drive. Without erasing the contents of your computer, you could potentially open yourself up to identity theft. Another reason to reset your Mac to factory settings is it may just be getting too slow because of many years of use. You may find that you’ve run out of disk space if your computer speed is lagging.
This guide will help you restore your computer to its original factory settings. A factory reset will allow your machine to function as if it were brand new, with a new installation of the Mac operating system. You’ll find the process relevant to any Mac, whether desktop or laptop.
Why and How to Factory Reset a Mac
When you choose to factory reset a Mac, you are performing a series of low level operations. First, a full hard drive formatting. Second, you’ll be reinstalling the Mac operating system (macOS). A formatting of the hard drive is equal to a permanent deletion of data — everything is erased and removed from your computer.
Having issues with the computer file system is one of the most common reasons to reset your Mac to its original factory settings. If there are lost or damaged files, random errors may occur or the computer may act slow and sluggish.
Whether you are planning to sell or speed up your computer, wiping your hard drive clean and installing a fresh operating system is a good idea.
What to Do Before You Restore a Mac to Factory Settings
Before we run through the instructions on how to wipe a Mac clean, you’ll want to take care of a few things, such as protecting your data with a backup, disabling certain applications, and making sure you have an active internet connection.
1. Protect your data
You probably know that it’s important to back up your data before performing a factory reset of your Mac. You wouldn’t want to lose any important data, such as the videos or photos stored on your MacBook from years ago.
To prevent any kind of data-loss mishap, you should use backup software, such as Get Backup Pro, to help you back up and protect your data before you continue wiping your hard drive clean and completing a factory reset.
Here’s how to do a back up using Get Backup Pro:
- Create a new project by clicking the “+” button in the Backups tab
- Select a destination for the backup
- Click on File+ to add files you want to back up
2. Log out of and deauthorize iTunes or apps with limited licensing
Did you know that you can only play your iTunes content on 5 devices? This means that iTunes will only let you authorize your account on up to 5 different Macs. If you’re looking to pass on your Mac, make sure your computer isn’t linked to your iTunes account. Some apps with limited licensing such as iTunes use an authorization system to limit the number of devices connected. It’s a good idea to prevent future issues by deauthorizing these apps, which also include purchased Adobe products (Illustrator, Photoshop, etc.), before completing a factory reset.
Deauthorizing your iTunes account is easy:
- In the iTunes menu bar, click Account
- Click Authorizations and choose Deauthorize This Computer
- Enter your Apple ID and password
- Choose Deauthorize
3. Disable iCloud
![Restart Macbook Touch Bar Restart Macbook Touch Bar](/uploads/1/3/8/4/138435583/617461657.jpg)
Make sure any bookmarks, reminders, notes, or other stored cloud data are not visible to new users by signing out of iCloud. Without signing out of your iCloud account, certain features, such as theft prevention tool, Find My Mac, may still allow you to interact with a computer that has been wiped clean. You don’t want to find that you have access to your old computer once it has a new owner.
- Choose System Preferences in the Apple menu
- Pick iCloud
- Click Sign Out and confirm the data removal
4. Sign out of iMessage
If your Mac uses OS X Mountain Lion or later, be sure to sign out of iMessage before you complete a factory reset of a Mac. If your computer has been configured to send and receive iMessage chats, you’ll definitely want to ensure a new owner doesn’t have access to your private messages.
- Open iMessage on your computer
- In the menu bar on the top left corner of the screen, click Messages
- Choose Preferences
- Find your iMessage account
- Click Sign Out
5. Erase Touch Bar data
Following the same rationale, make sure to perform these steps so your Touch Bar data won’t be passed onto the new Mac owner.
- Restart your Mac device
- Hold down the Command + R keys as the Mac begins to restart
- Choose Utilities and Terminal from the macOS Utilities window
- Type: xartutil --erase-all and press Return
- Type yes and press Return once more
- Choose Terminal and click Quit
6. Make sure you have an active internet connection
Check for a stable and active internet connection throughout the factory reset procedure. Most data, including the files required to reinstall your macOS, are stored on Apple’s servers. Without an active internet connection, you may not be able to use your computer temporarily.
How to Restore a Mac to Factory Settings
Have you completed your data backup and signed out of everything? If the answer is yes, you are ready to wipe your Mac and have it ready for a fresh start.
1. Restart your Mac in Recovery Mode
This step is quite simple. In the Apple menu in the top left corner of the screen, choose Restart. As the system is restarting, hold both the Command and R keys on the keyboard at the same time — you’ll see the Recovery Mode window.
2. Erase the hard drive
Here’s what you need to do to erase your hard drive.
- Choose Disk Utility in the Utilities window
- Choose your startup disk
- At the top of the Disk Utilities window, choose Erase
- Choose Journaled version of Mac OS Extended from the menu
- Click Erase
Once the process has been completed, go to the Disk Utility menu in the top left corner of the screen and click Quit Disk Utility.
3. Reinstall the operating system
Now that the hard drive has been wiped clean, you can confirm that you want to reinstall a fresh Mac operating system by following the instructions on the screen.
The computer will complete a new installation of the operating system with factory settings.
If you are passing your Mac to a new owner, you can quit the process and let the new owner complete any necessary information by holding down the Command + Q keys. Choose Shut Down to turn the Mac off and leave it ready for the next person. If you are keeping your Mac computer, you’ll need to download any applications that you previously had on your computer.
Now that your Mac has been wiped clean, your computer shouldn’t have any remnants of your personal data. It’s now ready for a new beginning with you or a new life with someone else.
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A couple of years ago, Apple added a new feature to it’s MacBook Pros. The feature presents a touch bar that provides users with multi-touch controls. Even though Apple fans were excited about this new feature at first, yet when they finally got to use it they faced issues with it. Most problems related to it being unresponsive. If you too are facing this problem and want easy repair solutions stay tight because this blog post is going to break down ways of what you should do when your touch bar is not responding or working properly.
Force Quit troubling Apps
The touch bar frequently changes depending on what application you are using and what actions do they require from your MacBook. Because of that, sometimes, the Touch Bar becomes unresponsive or stops working. It either shows errored buttons or a button that is useless.
To rid yourself of this issue, you’d need to force shut the problematic application. Here is how:
- Click the Apple menu on the top right corner of your Mac screen.
- Click on the “Force quit” option and then shut down the app.
- Double Force Quit the app to make sure its shut down, and if this app was, in fact, causing the problem, then by doing those steps your problem will be solved.
Refresh the Touch Bar | Option 1
If it was not an application problem, then you might want to try refreshing the Touch Bar itself. To do that, use the command line on your Macbook. By refreshing the touch bar, you are basically cleaning the touch bar’s individual memory and resources. This helps in restarting the touch bar by distributing new resources. And as a result, the problem will be solved. Here is how you can refresh the touch bar:
- Launch Terminal app – The Terminal app is found in the Utilities section in Applications. If you can’t find it, look it up using spotlight search.
- Then, type in this command: pkill “ Touch Bar Agent”
- Now refresh the Touch Bar by clicking the return key. This will possibly fix Touch Bar’s volume problems.
Refresh the Touch Bar | Option 2
Another way you could refresh the touch Bar is from the Activity Monitor. You could use this way if you are having difficulty following the previous option, specifically if your Touchbar’s backlight is not working. Here is how:
- Open the Activity monitor from the Utilities section in Applications
- Look up the “ Touch Bar Agent” Process. This process manages your touch bar so once you remove the process then your problem will get fixed.
Refresh the Control Strip on the Touch Bar.
Another way to fix the touch bar issue is to refresh the control strip. It placed on the right side of the bar. Here is how you can refresh it:
- Launch the terminal app.
- Type the following command: killall ControlStrip.
- Then finally click the return key to start the control strip again.
Sometimes when facing these issues, users tend to lose their data in the process. Due to deleting something by mistake, misoperating apps or accidentals in the format process, etc. To recover data when this happens, we recommend you use a Mac data recovery software.
Problem Still Not Fixed?
Then we are more than happy to help. Come to IT-Tech Online and get your MacBook checked at our Mac Repair Centre in Melbourne.
If you have tried the DIY options above but did not have luck in finding a solution the most probably the hardware itself might be the cause of the problem. But not to worry, we specialize in fixing this type of issue, be it Macbook motherboard repair, Mac logic board repair or any other Mac repair services. A Macbook Specialist will be there to provide you with the Mac Repair Services you need.
Click here to read a recent job that we completed on a 2018 MacBook Pro which had the touch bar not working due to water damage. You’ll find information on how we diagnosed and fixed it.
Contact IT-Tech Online on (03) 9563 8588 for any Mac repairs today.
Force Restart Macbook Pro Touch Bar
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