How to add shortcuts to the Touch Bar without any third-party software

Hi, so ever since I got the Touch Bar version, I was wondering how to add shortcuts to it without installing any other 3rd party tools. So here’s a simple way you can do it.

In this tutorial, I’ll be guiding how you can add folder and website shortcut URLs to your Touch Bar.

There’s something called quick actions for macOS. So, there are Touch Bar quick actions as well. All you need to do is make an extension.

First of all, I configured my Touch Bar to look like this (removed Siri shortcut— always triggers accidentally):

(working)

Step 1

To configure your Touch Bar to this setup, head over to system preferences -> keyboard -> Customize Control Strip.

Then you need to drag the Quick Actions button to your Touch Bar.

Once that is done, you’ll see that if you click that quick actions button, no quick actions really appear — that is because there are none yet!

(I configured in this way, so when you click the rightmost icon, you’ll get the shortcuts)

Step 2: Make a quick Action

Go to the Automator app, click ‘Quick Action’

Now search “Apple Script” and double click it.

So here, you can configure colors, icon as well as the function to do (apple script). Here are two examples of shortcuts, which open a local folder and a webpage accordingly:

Click to see in full

You can edit the URL & folder links for your own. I’ll post more scripts in a later tutorial.

I hope you were able to configure your Touch Bar! If you get any problems let me know in the comments!

PS: You might need to allow this quick action in security and privacy settings.

(Tick ‘ServicesUIAgent’)