This developer has made MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar compatible with Windows 10
A clever hack by a third-party developer has brought MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar functionality alive when running under Windows 10 via Bootcamp.
The Touch Bar on Windows 10 allows you to easily access the Start menu, search, Cortana and also switch between apps running on the device instantly. In other words, the Touch Bar can be used as a substitute for Taskbar on Windows 10. However, this hack will only work if you run Windows 10 on a MacBook Pro.
In order to make the Touch Bar appear on the MacBook Pro, the developer @imbushuo used Microsoft’s USB Common Class Generic Parent Driver (USBCCGP) and a modified Windows Registry entry to switch to the second configuration on Windows. He then used a kernel driver that was specifically built for this purpose to support FrameBuffer transfer.
According to the developer, this customized driver utilizes the Touch Bar as a USB display device, which then uses the FrameBuffer to display the Taskbar.
Not quite. Touch Bar is a USB device with multiple configurations: the default configuration provides a USBHID keyboard as basic function keys; the second configuration provides a customized USB display device as well as a USBHID Digitizer (Touch Pad / Screen).
— Sunshine Biscuit at scale (@imbushuo) July 25, 2019
Using USBCCGP driver and a registry entry it is possible to switch to the second configuration on Windows, then a driver has been implemented to support FrameBuffer transfer (display)
— Sunshine Biscuit at scale (@imbushuo) July 25, 2019
The project is still in an early development stage. Those who have used Touch Bar with Windows 10 have reported battery drain issues and inability to connect to Bluetooth or Wi-Fi.
However, if you are still interested to know how does it work on your device, then you can head over to the GitHub repository and download it.
