Touch It Your Way: A Guide to Rearranging Items on the macOS Touch Bar

for macOS Sequoia

Intro

Although Apple has killed off Macs with the Touch Bar, there are of course some still in the wild. Rearranging the control strip on the Touch Bar is easier than you might think. Just by looking at the instructions found in System Settings, it doesn't seem like there is a way to accomplish this. "Drag your favorite items to the bottom of the screen to add them to the Touch Bar. Drag items up from the Touch Bar to remove them."

Dragging things doesn't work because VoiceOver will not drag something with the "Press" action. I was stumped, and it took me a few moments to figure out how to do this.

Customizing the control strip: The Accessible Way

1. Open System Settings>Keyboard>Touch Bar Settings.
2. Press customize Control Strip.

Notice when you move your finger across the Touch Bar, all controls like brightness have been grouped into one control. If you've moved apps manually on the iOS home screen, you already know how to customize the Touch Bar; it works the same way:

1. Find an item you wish to rearrange.
   • Pro tip: On my Mac, the right half of the Touch Bar doesn't work. If you are in a similar situation, flick gestures also work on the Touch Bar.
2. Double tap to remove an item if you don't want it there.
3. To rearrange an item, double tap and hold, and once you hear the tone, drag left and right.
   • VoiceOver will tell you as you drag your finger where the item is in relation to other items, and what its index is, such as "moved Media to be after Launchpad, at index 5".
4. Release your finger to place the icon at the spot you dragged it to.
5. Press done, then press done again to exit Touch Bar Settings.

That's it, it's that simple to rearrange your Touch Bar items.