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DockTouchBar

Simple, elegant, efficient Dock for the Touch Bar. Tap to switch, double-tap to hide, long-press to quit.

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GITHUB · launched Sep 26, 2026 · 13 upvotes (top 59%) · 0 views

Niche: macos system utilities · 448 launches, 31 in the last 7 days ▼ -30% · Explore this niche →

Category and tags

  • Horizontal
  • Workflow automation
  • Prosumer
  • Not AI
  • Hobby / open-source project
  • appkit
  • dock
  • macos
  • menu-bar-app
  • swift
  • touch-bar

Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗

Could you build this?

Partial Building the UI in AppKit/SwiftUI is straightforward, but hacking persistent customization onto the macOS Touch Bar requires private Apple APIs and low-level system event hooks.

What it would actually take: The app is written in Swift using AppKit, requiring access to private `DFRElement` and `TouchBarServer` APIs or reverse-engineered Control Strip injection techniques to keep the dock resident. It also interfaces with `NSWorkspace` and the Accessibility API (`AXUIElement`) to monitor active applications, window positions, and handle process termination. Developing and maintaining this requires deep macOS internal subsystem knowledge and working around Apple's sandbox restrictions.

Competitors

Other products that read as similar to this one : 552 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.

Attention rank: #285 of 553 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).

Launched 314 days after the earliest competitor.

  • DockThumb · ph · 2026-10-16 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.58
  • Freeze · ph · 2026-11-07 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.55
  • Sticky Dock · ph · 2026-10-01 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.53
  • snapdock · github · 2026-10-21 · 110 upvotes · similarity 0.53
  • Glassline · ph · 2026-11-09 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.51
  • DockLens · ph · 2026-10-02 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.51
  • Superdock · ph · 2026-09-25 · 10 upvotes · similarity 0.51
  • Dockish · ph · 2026-11-07 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.50

The niche, labels, vibe code rating and competitor comparison on this page are analysis by Nicheloom. If you use them, please credit nicheloom.com. How you may use our data.