Music Bar - Music Bar is macOS application that places music controls right in your menu bar. NoiseBuddy - Control the listening mode on your AirPods Pro in the Touch Bar or Menu Bar. PlayStatus - PlayStatus is a macOS app that allows the control of Spotify and iTunes music playback from the menu bar. With your Mac's Touch Bar, you can control a wide variety of settings and tools within macOS, as well as built-in and third-party apps. Many of these controls are customizable, including the Control Strip, allowing you to add or remove tools to create a better workflow for your daily usage.
macOS Big Sur takes the most advanced operating system in the world to a whole new level of power and beauty, and makes your apps look better than ever. Widgets and the widget gallery help you deliver more value to your users. Adding intelligence to your apps with machine learning is simple with extensive tools, models, training capabilities, and APIs. You can create more powerful Mac versions of your iPad apps with Mac Catalyst. And you can easily bring your extensions to Safari — and to the App Store.
All-new Interface
macOS Big Sur brings a new design that’s been finely tuned for the powerful features that make a Mac a Mac. Core features, such as the menu bar and Dock, take advantage of the large Mac display, with translucent backings and spacious pull-down menus. The new Control Center, designed just for Mac, provides quick access to controls while keeping the menu bar clutter-free. Notification Center puts recent notifications and powerful new widgets together in a single view for at-a-glance information as you work. And a streamlined new design for apps features full-height sidebars and integrated toolbar buttons.
Widgets
Easily build widgets using the WidgetKit framework and the new widget API for SwiftUI. Widgets now come in multiple sizes, and users can visit the new widget gallery to search, preview sizes, and add them to Notification Center to access important details at a glance.
Safari Extensions
With support for the popular WebExtension API, it’s even easier to bring powerful extensions to Safari. Xcode 12 even includes a porting tool to streamline the process.
The new Extensions category on the Mac App Store showcases Safari extensions, with editorial spotlights and top charts to help users discover and download great extensions from the developer community.
Machine Learning
With macOS Big Sur, creating apps that leverage the power of machine learning is even easier and more extensive with additional tools in Core ML for model deployment, new models and training capabilities in Create ML, more APIs for vision and natural language, and improved resources for training on Mac and converting models to Core ML format.
Mac Catalyst
Create even more powerful Mac versions of your iPad apps. Apps built with Mac Catalyst now take on the new look of macOS Big Sur and help you better define the look and behavior of your apps. You can choose to turn off automatic scaling of iPad controls and layout, allowing you to precisely place every pixel on the screen. Provide full control of your app using just the keyboard, take advantage of the updated Photos picker, access more iOS frameworks, and more.
User privacy on the App Store
The Mac App Store helps users better understand apps’ privacy practices. You’ll need to enter your privacy practice details into App Store Connect for display on your product page.
Tools and resources
Use Xcode 12 and these resources to build apps for macOS Big Sur.
Show the function keys
Press and hold the Fn (Function) key on your keyboard to see F1 through F12 in the Touch Bar.
You can also make the function keys appear automatically when you use specific apps:
- Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Keyboard.
- Click Shortcuts at the top of the window, then select Function Keys from the list on the left.
- Click the add button (+), then select an app and click Add. For each app that you add, the function keys will automatically appear in the Touch Bar whenever you're using that app.
Or use the onscreen keyboard
As an alternative to showing the function keys in the Touch Bar, you can use the function keys in the onscreen keyboard.
Touch Bar Chicago
- Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Keyboard and complete one of these steps:
- If you're using macOS Big Sur, select 'Show Input menu in menu bar' in the Input Sources pane.
- If you're using macOS Catalina or earlier, select ”Show Keyboard and emoji viewers in menu bar” in the Keyboard pane.
- Click the viewer icon in the menu bar, then choose Show Keyboard Viewer.
- Click the Fn key in the onscreen keyboard to make it show all function keys.
Show the function keys when using Microsoft Windows
Press and hold the Fn (Function) key on your keyboard to see F1 through F12 in the Touch Bar.
You can also make the function keys appear continuously in the Touch Bar:
- From the notification area on the right side of the Windows taskbar, click the up arrow to show hidden icons.
- Click the Boot Camp icon , then choose Boot Camp Control Panel from the menu.
- If you're asked whether to allow this app to make changes, click Yes.
- Click the Keyboard tab.
- Select ”Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys”.
Or use the onscreen keyboard
As an alternative to showing the function keys in the Touch Bar, you can use the onscreen keyboard:
- From the Windows menu, select Windows Ease of Access.
- Click On-Screen Keyboard.
- Click the Fn key in the onscreen keyboard to make it show all function keys.
Apple Macbook Touch Bar Apps
Learn more about the onscreen keyboard in Windows.