Do you have a MacBook with a Touch Bar that you are ignoring? You could fix that today with this week’s sponsor, BetterTouchTool. My Touch Bar gives me the current date and time, the current temperature (and daily high and low), and a list of my upcoming appointments. I like to think of it as my “Informational Touch Bar” and it was easy to set up with BetterTouchTool. Here’s a picture of my Touch Bar.

The Informational Touch Bar - Click to enlarge.

The Time

I know you can also display the time and date in the menu bar, but I often work in full screen when I’m on a laptop so putting it in the Touch Bar is useful.

The Time Widget is customizable. You can set your own formatting using the Unicode standard. Here is the code I’m using for the pictured setup.

E MMM d H:mm

The time widget setup - Click to enlarge.

The Temperature

This widget is seasonal for me. Once it gets warm, I don’t need to know the exact temperature, but it helps me out during colder periods. My setup is a little odd because I put the current temperature but also the high-low in parenthesis. I don’t bother with the Fahrenheit designation on the high-low to save space. Here is the BTT code for my temperature widget.

{temp} {unit} {icon} ({apparentTemperatureLow} - {apparentTemperatureHigh})

The weather widget setup - Click to enlarge.

Upcoming Events

This is my favorite BTT widget. I block nearly all of my time through the day and having a display on my Touch Bar (it scrolls!) comes in super handy when I am not sure where I'm going/doing next. Here is my syntax for this display:

{eventTitle}

{attendanceStatus}{all-day}{startTime} {-} {endTime} {@} {location}

The event widget setup - Click to enlarge.

It takes almost no time to set simple widgets like this up with BetterTouchTool and dramatically increase your Touch Bar’s value. BetterTouchTool can also do a lot more with your mouse, touchpad, and just about any other Mac input device you can throw at it. To learn more, head over to the BetterTouchTool website. My thanks to BetterTouchTool for sponsoring MacSparky and helping me get more out of the Touch Bar.