Latest Chrome Canary Build Includes Support for MacBook Pro Touch Bar

Wednesday February 22, 2017 4:02 PM PST by Juli Clover
The newest build (58.0.3020.0) of Chrome Canary, Google's experimental browser, includes support for the Touch Bar built into the 2016 MacBook Pro, indicating Touch Bar support will soon be added to the Chrome browser.

On the Touch Bar, the current Chrome Canary build offers a search/URL bar, forward and back buttons, a refresh/stop option, a button for opening a new tab, and a button for adding a new bookmark.


It's much a simpler implementation than Touch Bar support in Safari, which includes preview tabs for quickly switching between windows. There are also no controls available for video or music playback in the browser.

Features are tested in Canary before being added release builds of the Google Chrome browser, so Touch Bar support is expected in Chrome 58, set to be released during the week of April 25th.

Those who want to give Touch Bar support a try ahead of the release of Chrome 58 can download Chrome Canary from Google.

Tags: Google, Chrome
27 comments

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alphaod
38 months ago
Looking forward to it, but I don't use the Touch Bar for anything. It's still much faster to use keyboard shortcuts.\

I can see this being good for my folks or other people who are less familiar with keyboard shortcuts.
Rating: 9 Votes
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otternonsense
38 months ago
There's nothing useful about the Touchbar, other than perhaps scrolling through a song without opening Spotify or iTunes. Especially when working on 2 displays, the last thing I wanna do is interrupt my focus to look down on this wonky emojistrip. I also wish the new MBPs had the option to ship without it.
Rating: 4 Votes
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HJM.NL
38 months ago

But who besides pros and heavy users pay more than 3 thousand cash for a laptop?

The same people who buy Gucci and Prada. The target audience of Apple today are the novice tech people who aren't interested in the best or value for money and those same people aren't that demanding in wanting the best in money can buy. Apple wants to be a status symbol. They always were a bit more expensive in history but they were better then their competitors too. Today it's 'bling', status and overpriced minus premium delivery.
Rating: 3 Votes
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Substance90
38 months ago
Man, they are trying really hard to make the Macbook a joke among actual "pro" users. First they remove features the pros need and then they add useless features on top, just to add insult to injury. :(

I guess I'll work on my maxed out 2014 MBP a few more years and then switch to a Windows laptop.
Rating: 3 Votes
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HJM.NL
38 months ago

There's nothing useful about the Touchbar, other than perhaps scrolling through a song without opening Spotify or iTunes. Especially when working on 2 displays, the last thing I wanna do is interrupt my focus to look down on this wonky emojistrip. I also wish the new MBPs had the option to ship without it.

Apple needs a reason to up the price by € 500,-. The ergonomic touchbar disaster is one of them. They target one finger typing persons who have to look down at the keyboard anyway. It's about 5 years ago Apple targeted the heavy user anyway.
Rating: 3 Votes
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jblagden
38 months ago

Does the new Chrome also support my (2015 rMB) CPU not boiling when I try to watch a YouTube movie in 4K?

Have you enabled GPU acceleration?
Rating: 2 Votes
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atikalz
38 months ago

Why isn't the escape key at the very left end of the touchbar?
What is the purpose of it being offset relative to the tilde key?

That's because John Ive (the man who invented a round mouse) needs everything aligned perfect optically instead of ergonomic and usable. And the right side needed to be offset because of touch id.
Rating: 2 Votes
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atikalz
38 months ago

Haptic feedback will probably be in 1-2 years time, but what I'm referring to is those who wanted physical tactile keys

That's the reason I returned my MBP 15" 2016 model and bought a 2015 model.

I would have loved a 15" model without touchbar.
Rating: 2 Votes
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Carlson-online
38 months ago
Excellent news.

FYI, this doesn't just effect chrome, but anything that uses it ( e.g. Electron/ Atom / VS Code ) they've been waiting for this to land
Rating: 1 Votes
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konqerror
38 months ago


And for those who screams no physical tactile feedback, I wonder how many people can actually press the function keys without looking at it.


If you've been using Windows for any length of time, you can hit alt-F4 without looking.

I find the touch bar far more useful as a focused information display and not as input. I was giving a Keynote presentation directly from the screen and I looked down and there was the time and thumbnails of the slides left. Then I pressed right arrow.

Apple's keyboard shortcuts are good enough (like what other Alt-Fkey combination do you use in Windows) that the touch bar isn't necessary. But screens are cluttered enough where a dedicated info strip is useful.
Rating: 1 Votes
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