Flexbar review: Could be the heir-apparent to the Touch Bar, someday

The Flexbar is a replacement for Apple's Touch Bar that could give the Stream Deck a run for its money — assuming the software is fully hammered into shape at some point.

The Touch Bar was an element of the MacBook Pro keyboard that offered the promise of productivity. By giving users the ability to touch a row of context-aware buttons that performed shortcuts or changed settings, they could potentially do more without needing to navigate menus or remember key combinations.

While the component had potential, it was often derided and was eventually replaced by a row of physical function keys, following the death of the 13-inch MacBook Pro.

Consumers no longer have the option of using the Touch Bar in Apple's current crop of hardware, and instead they must look elsewhere if the want something similar. The Stream Deck is an obvious and well-tested option, but if you wanted an interface that's much closer to the Touch Bar in concept, you should instead turn to the Flexbar.

Created by Eniac, the Flexbar is a thin OLED display that provides a set of software buttons and controls to work with your Mac and its apps. By touching the screen, you can trigger shortcuts, macros, or otherwise control the connected Mac, all from a bar designed to sit above your keyboard, like the original Touch Bar.

While it won't necessarily offer all of the functionality of Apple's Touch Bar, it does offer a lot of what its predecessor promised.

Flexbar review - Design

The Flexbar is, chiefly, an OLED display in an aluminum alloy enclosure. It's a thin bar of a display, and at 10.8 inches long, 0.6 inches wide, and 0.3 inches thick, it's almost as long as a Magic Keyboard.

The aluminum alloy enclosure wouldn't go amiss when surrounded by Apple hardware, so it will blend in with most people's Mac setups with ease.

The heart of the device is that 2K AMOLED screen, which has a resolution of 2,170 by 60 pixels. This obviously isn't intended to be used as an actual display for content, but it's big enough for tappable elements to be visible.

Flexbar review: The display is bright and easily readable.

It's a touch-enabled screen, but there are also two black display-less elements at the ends. While not used as part of the visible display, they do still have uses, such as opening a small interface drawer or being the default "back" button.

It's also very light at 71.7 grams (2.5 ounces), so it's easy to carry around with a MacBook Pro. That is, if you can stow it away in a right-sized pocket in your bag.

When used as intended at the top of a MacBook Pro's keyboard, it does mean you have to raise your fingers about half an inch to press elements of it. When used on a desktop Mac, placed on the desk behind the keyboard, it's going to be a lot more level with the keys.

Flexbar review: It's a long touch-enabled display, similar to the Touch Bar

When used on its own, its smooth base means it can easily slip around your desk if you're not careful. Eniac does supply some pads to increase the amount of grip, but there's also a magnetic stand that ships with it.

The wedge-shaped stand sticks to the Flexbar firmly, and angles the display toward the user, making it easier to see the screen. This does raise the Flexbar up higher, so it's tougher to reach on a MacBook Pro, but it's considerably more useful for desktop-based users.

Flexbar review: The supplied magnetic wedge helps angle the Flexbar

Connecting the Flexbar to your Mac is handled by a USB-C cable, with a woven one supplied in the box. This connects to one end of the Flexbar, handling data and power.

This could be a problem for people wanting a wireless desktop, but it would be hard to imagine hiding a battery in that enclosure without needing to make it thicker.

By default, you connect to the USB-C port on the right-hand side of the display, but you can flip it around and change a setting so it works with the port on the left too.

The light weight of the Flexbar does introduce the problem of cable jostling moving the bar itself very easily. It's less of an issue when using the stand for extra weight, but it's still something to bear in mind while using it.

Flexbar review - Designer

While the hardware itself is half the equation, the other is the software. Flexbar Designer is the app you use to add all of the software buttons and elements to the Flexbar itself.

Given a representation of the Flexbar, users can add buttons of different types that perform different tasks. The most obvious are buttons used to perform a macro or to perform keypresses for you, such as a button that places basic HTML code into a text box.

Other types include media control, hardware management elements such as the screen brightness of your Mac or volume control, and buttons to open webpages or applications.

All of the buttons can be positioned easily, and with a lot of control over how each button looks. This can include making a button wider or narrower, border styles, font styles, and arrangement of elements within the button itself.

They're not just buttons, either. For example, you can set up a volume control slider so that you can set the exact volume percentage you want.

Not everything has to be interactive, as you could also use the Flexbar as a display for data. There are options to view metrics such as CPU load or RAM usage, which are shown as live-updating graphs.

Flexbar review: Flexbar Designer is used to configure the menus from your Mac.

You're also not limited to just one screen of icons and elements, as you can define pages. Each page can hold multiple buttons, which can make it a lot easier to group together shortcuts depending on your currently in-use application.

In the short time spent with the Flexbar, we've been able to set up a page of shortcuts for Blender and Twitch. In a demonstration layout preinstalled on the Flexbar, it included pages for Adobe applications, games including Minecraft, OBS, and pages of prepared phrases and statements for chatrooms.

It is possible to arrange up to 14 levels of nested pages in the Flexbar, so you could easily set up groups of icons into larger groups. For example, pages for Adobe Premiere, Lightroom, and Photoshop could be nested inside a general Adobe page, which itself could be within a Work nest.

The manual does explain that it is possible to bind a page to a window, so that it will appear on the Flexbar as soon as that window or application is in focus on the main desktop. This can be extremely useful, if properly configured.

While Eniac has gone to some trouble to make the process of adding elements to the Flexbar's display understandable, it is still a lot of work for a user to undertake. It could be made a lot easier for a user to get started with the Flexbar, such as having pre-defined default shortcut collections for apps that users could add.

This isn't available now, but it could be in the future.

As a project offered on Kickstarter, the team is still working on getting all of the elements in place, including creating the software that Flexbar needs to run. As prerelease software supplied to AppleInsider before the Flexbar shifts, the software is in a usable state, if not fully polished.

Since it's software, there is always the prospect of expanding its features to make it a lot more user-friendly. Indeed, there are already promises of elements that are in development to accomplish this.

A plug-in system will allow developers to add Flexbar functionality through APIs. This offers the opportunity for deeper integration with apps, and possibly more control options.

A plug-in marketplace will also be on the way, which will in turn simplify the process of users adding apps to the Flexbar interface. It's easy to imagine being able to install a plugin and have a page automatically populate with relevant buttons and controls for an app.

However, these are still in-development features that won't be available at first. It is expected that the plug-in system and marketplace will launch sometime in the second quarter of 2025.

They aren't available now, but it's easy to see them being welcomed by users down the road.

Flexbar review - In Use

There is the expectation that the Flexbar is similar in usage to Apple's Touch Bar. To a point, it is.

The bright display, with an adjustable brightness control, crisply displays the software buttons and sliders without issue. Even with large fingers, the smallest button settings are still easily pressed without mis-taps, and placed above the keyboard, it's easily within reach.

That is, if the cable of your keyboard doesn't get in the way too much. If you have a keyboard with a cable that sticks out the back, it will get in the way and force you to move the Flexbar over to the side.

Flexbar review: The base is very flat and slick. Use the magnetic stand for more grip and weight.

The act of pressing the buttons or other elements is also helped by haptic feedback. A button tap or a slide is greeted with a small vibration, acknowledging your press.

Taps are also quickly acted upon if they involve the Mac, with actions carried out with minimal lag.

It's very easy to imagine using this in a similar way to a Stream Deck. If you have masses of shortcuts and macros set up in a Stream Deck, you can easily add more in a bar-style arrangement here.

There are a few included functions that are more for show than they are practical. There are hexadecimal converters and calculators which, while functional, don't really lend themselves to a bar layout versus your typical calculator number pad grid.

There's also the curious addition of a ruler with both centimeter and inch markings. It's a bit of fun but it is also accurate, making it handy if you need a measurement and a physical ruler is nowhere to be found.

Flexbar review: It communicates to your Mac using USB-C.

Where the Flexbar doesn't quite match the Touch Bar is in Apple's advantageous integrations. The key one being the lack of suggested words when using a text editor, a task the Touch Bar was extremely handy for having.

It's feasible that this sort of functionality could be added using the plug-in system in some way, but not for the moment.

Using it over time, we did run into the issue of lightness, as it was very prone to move when tapped lightly, even on the magnetic stand. This is probably down to using it on a shiny wooden surface rather than a mousepad or another surface with more grip.

Flexbar review - A great start for a niche peripheral

The Flexbar certainly offers a lot of productivity bonuses to users in a similar way to the Touch Bar it emulates, as well as the competing Stream Deck. It's a handy little screen that offers shortcuts within a short range of your fingertips and your keyboard.

It already demonstrates a high level of customizability, but with it comes complexity. For something like this, you'd expect an intrepid user to be able to get themselves set up and running after a bit of studying how to use the Flexbar Designer tool and some time tinkering.

For the average Mac user, they will need a lot more guidance as it is quite an intimidating thing to get going with. It does need more simplification of the setup process for those users.

Handily, this is a thing that can be dealt with via software updates, with add-ons on the way. Just not right now.

Hardware-wise, it's hard to criticize the Flexbar. It's bright, wide, easily understandable once set up, and very intuitive to use.

Flexbar review: There's a lot of promise, but it needs to perfect its software.

The light weight of it is mitigated by the extremely useful stand, but can be an issue. Some may also complain about the lack of a battery and wireless options, but that again could be a second-gen revision.

As a first attempt to try and make a comparative product to Apple's Touch Bar, the Flexbar gets a lot of things right. Hardware-wise it's pretty much there, with software improvements being the next phase of improvement.

It's not quite there right now. We can certainly tell where the team wants to go with this, and where it might eventually end up.

Flexbar Pros

• Apple-like physical design
• Bright and easy to use display
• Vastly customizable menus, with the prospect for more with app plug-ins

Flexbar Cons

• Initial setup is challenging to the average user
• Light weight, easily moved with the cable

Rating: 3 out of 5

The Flexbar is an interesting product. As a rule, we like the idea, and the concept. The execution just isn't there right now, and prospective users would be better served with an Elgato Stream Deck, with the software the way it is.

So, this score is based on the pre-release hardware and software supplied to AppleInsider for review purposes. It takes into account what is usable at the time of the review itself, and doesn't factor in software improvements that have yet to be implemented.

If done right, the inbound software updates expected in the coming months could make it a far better overall product. It's easily feasible for the score to be 4 out of 5 at that point — it just isn't right now. We may revisit this in the future.

As part of the review, we've also incorporated the fact that it's a crowdfunded project. As a crowdfunded project, there is always the risk the product not shipping as promised — or at all. Because of this, AppleInsider doesn't cover the majority of crowdfunding efforts as a rule, unless hardware is available and after an assessment of the team behind the effort.

Where to buy the Flexbar

The Flexbar is currently available on Kickstarter with a campaign that will end on January 2, 8 AM Eastern, 1 PM UTC. At the time of publication, it has raised $264,684 of its $2,576 goal.

It has an MSRP of $179, with Kickstarter backer bundles starting from $149.