t1-touchbar

Make your 2016–2017 Intel MacBook Pro (T1) Touch Bar work on Linux.

On the 2016–2017 MacBook Pros (MacBookPro13,x / 14,x) the Touch Bar is a T1 ("iBridge") device. Mainline Linux only ever supported the T2 models, so on these machines the bar was just a black strip. This is a small DKMS kernel driver that lets the T1's own firmware draw the normal control strip — Esc, brightness, keyboard backlight, media, volume, and hold-Fn for F1–F12, exactly like macOS. Set-and-forget; your webcam keeps working too.

The T1 bar has worked on Linux for years via the apple-ib-drv / roadrunner2 community — but only up to kernel 6.x. A 2023 HID change broke it on newer kernels, and Linux 7.0 only released in April 2026, so the bar went dark on current systems. This is that driver ported forward to build and bind on kernel 7, made freeze-safe by default. It stands entirely on the shoulders of the kernel-6 work.

⚠️ Freeze safety. On these models an ACPI power-on call (ASOC.SOCW(1)) hard-freezes the machine (power-button recovery). The driver skips it by default on T1 hardware and the installer pins skip_acpi_power=1, so the supported path is safe — the only way to hit the freeze is to force it back on with skip_acpi_power=0. Don't. See Troubleshooting.

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AJ-dev-i60/t1-touchbar/main/install.sh | bash

…or clone it first:

git clone https://github.com/AJ-dev-i60/t1-touchbar && cd t1-touchbar && sudo ./install.sh

No git? The curl line fetches the repo itself. Flags: --yes (non-interactive), --dry-run (preview every action), --no-service (don't load it now). Needs root and an apt-based distro (Ubuntu/Debian); it pulls build-essential, dkms, and linux-headers.

The installer DKMS-builds the driver, sets skip_acpi_power=1, and installs the udev rule that puts the iBridge into USB config 1 — which exposes both the Touch Bar HID and the webcam. Then reboot to finish: on a running system the generic HID drivers have already claimed the device, so the live load may bind nothing; after one reboot the driver wins the race and the strip comes up on every boot.

To remove it: sudo ./uninstall.sh (then reboot).

Tested on

Model	Kernel	Distro	Result
MacBookPro14,3	7.0.0-27-generic	Ubuntu 26.04	✅ builds, binds after reboot, keys + OSD work, webcam intact

Other 13,x/14,x models and kernels should work but are unverified. DKMS rebuilds the module on kernel upgrades — but a broken rebuild fails silently, so after an upgrade check the bar still lights and that dkms status shows apple-ib-drv/0.1, <new-kernel>: installed.

Troubleshooting

Healthy signature (after a good boot):

lsmod | grep apple_touchbar                # loaded
dmesg | grep -i skip_acpi_power            # "skip_acpi_power: NOT running ASOC.SOCW(1)…"
dmesg | grep -iE 'apple-touchbar.*input:'  # Touch Bar HID created
# and the iBridge's bConfigurationValue reads 1

The installer prints this self-check for you.

Bar dark right after install? Expected — reboot once. The live modprobe can't claim interfaces the generic HID drivers already hold, and the installer deliberately doesn't force a live unbind/rebind (that would poke the same bind/power paths that can wedge the T1 — a reboot is safer).

Still dark after a reboot? Most likely usbmuxd (iOS tethering) grabbed the iBridge first — its udev rule also matches 05ac:8600. Drop the matches and reboot:

sudo sed -i '/05ac.*8600/d' /lib/udev/rules.d/39-usbmuxd.rules   # or: sudo systemctl mask usbmuxd
sudo udevadm control --reload && sudo reboot

"tainting kernel / signature missing"? Harmless with Secure Boot off. With Secure Boot on, enrol the DKMS key once: sudo mokutil --import /var/lib/dkms/mok.pub (set a password, reboot, confirm at the MOK screen), or the module won't load.

Recovery. If a boot ever hangs, at GRUB press e and add modprobe.blacklist=apple_ibridge,apple_touchbar to the kernel line.

Want to design your own bar?

Custom pixels — your own buttons, colours, and app-aware behaviours drawn by the host — are a separate, still-in-development project (t1-touchbar-studio) that takes a fundamentally different approach (the device's config-2 "DFR" display path). This repo stays lean: just the driver that makes the bar work.

Details, trust & license

• The driver is a fork of t2linux/apple-ib-drv (roadrunner2 lineage) with the kernel-7 build fixes and the DMI-gated freeze-skip on top — full fix list in apple-ib-drv/README.md. It's GPL-2.0; the installer and docs are MIT (LICENSE).
• Trust. It's root plus a kernel module that can freeze hardware, so skepticism is fair. The installer only writes to /etc/modprobe.d, /etc/udev/rules.d, /etc/modules-load.d, and DKMS under /usr/src, with no network beyond apt. Read it first if you like — --dry-run previews every action; see SECURITY.md.
• Authorship. Built with Claude Code as a pair-programmer — that's what the Claude / Co-Authored-By trailers in the history are, not tampering.

Acknowledgements

All the hard reverse-engineering and the working kernel-6 driver are the t2linux/apple-ib-drv / roadrunner2 community's work; this fork just ports it forward to kernel 7. Without them there'd be nothing to port.