Parallels Program Manager guest author: Alex Sursiakov
Touch Bar Support in Parallels Desktop for Mac
With Parallels Desktop® 13 for Mac (and Parallels Desktop® 14, as well), Mac® users can use Touch Bar™ for Windows applications. This function is supported in Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10.
To see App Controls in Touch Bar, make sure that some of the options with App Controls are selected in macOS® System Preferences → Keyboard pane.
I want to show you two different ways to customize your MacBook Pro Touch Bar. Both are easy to do and can go a long way to make macOS even more user-friendly. From within System Preferences. If you don’t like the default options, you can add and remove buttons to customize the Touch Bar. Open a window in an app to edit the Touch Bar options and click View. (I’m using Pages for this tutorial.) 2. Select “Customize Toolbar”. The Touch Bar on the MacBook Pro has a lot of customization features. You can add or remove a lot of tools in the Touch Bar settings section of various apps. Even the Control Strip is customizable if you know how to find it.
AppleCare+ for Mac Every Mac comes with a one-year limited warranty and up to 90 days of complimentary technical support.AppleCare+ for Mac extends your coverage to three years from your AppleCare+ purchase date and adds up to two incidents of accidental damage protection every 12 months, each subject to a service fee of $99 for screen damage or external enclosure damage, or $299. Customize the Touch Bar on MacBook Pro. In the Finder and in apps such as Mail and Safari, you can customize the buttons in the Touch Bar. You can also customize the Control Strip. Choose View Customize Touch Bar to add, delete, or rearrange items in the Touch Bar.
(Figure A)
A Mac with Touch Bar is highly recommended. However, if you are trying to decide if it’s worth it, you can try a Touch Bar emulator like Touche on your Mac without Touch Bar. There are more than 100,000 different Windows applications that users run on a Mac with the help of Parallels. Some applications have predefined sets of Touch Bar commands, and others do not—it is impossible to support all of them.
Applications with predefined commands are:
File Explorer
Browsers (Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome™, Opera, Vivaldi)
Microsoft Outlook
Microsoft Word and Word Mobile
Microsoft Excel and Excel Mobile
Microsoft PowerPoint and PowerPoint Mobile
There is also a set for Windows Desktop and Start Menu that you can customize by pinning your favorite applications to Windows Task Bar.
Task Bar:
(Figure B)
Touch Bar:
(Figure C)
So, what about other applications?
Default Touch Bar Customization
By default for all other applications, we show Functional keys:
(Figure D)
However, you can start an application and customize this set. Go to View menu and select “Customize Touch Bar .”
(Figure E)
You will see the following interface, where you can pretty much do what is asked: “Drag items into the Touch Bar…”
(Figure F)
If you don’t see the menu, it may be that you have enabled Functional keys for Parallels Desktop in macOS System Preferences → Shortcuts → Function Keys. Just remove Parallels Desktop from the list.
What if buttons that we have in this dialog don’t fit your needs?
Advanced Touch Bar Customization
There is a way to customize Touch Bar for any application.
All you need is to figure out how to complete the action with a keyboard, and some patience to fine-tune things.
If you are not tech savvy, then get ready to fail, fight, and ultimately succeed.
Note: Parallels doesn’t officially support this way of Touch Bar customization, so you are doing it at your own risk.
Set the Goal
First you need to understand what you want and how to achieve it.
For example, I am using Notepad++ to edit an HTML file, and I like to check how the webpage looks in different browsers.
Notepad++ has these shortcuts at hand:
(Figure G)
Ctrl + Alt + Shift + <letter>. I am not a fan of gymnastics for fingers, so I want to end up with this in Touch Bar:
(Figure H)
This is important: for an action you want to see in Touch Bar, you need to be able to achieve it using your keyboard. If this is possible, then you can create a Touch Bar button for this action.
Get Ready
Make a backup.
Parallels Desktop is an amazing software, and making a Windows backup is super easy.
In Window mode, select “Actions → Manage Snapshots…” and select “New…” here. You can also reach this item from Control Center, the Parallels icon in the menu bar, or the Windows icon in the Dock. When you are done with Touch Bar customization, you can remove the Snapshot to release disk space.
(Figure I)
Read more about snapshots here.
Add a Button
To explain to Parallels Desktop what you want to see in the Touch Bar for a certain application, you need to have an XML file with a certain name in a certain location.
In this XML file, you will describe Touch Bar buttons.
Let’s create a folder:
Open Windows File Explorer and enter %LOCALAPPDATA% in the path field and press Enter: (Figure J)
In most cases, it will open the “User name” > AppData > Local folder.
In this folder, create a new folder named “Parallels”; in the Parallels folder, create a folder named “CustomTouchBars”. So now it is likely to be C:Users<user name>AppDataLocalParallelsCustomTouchBars
Then create a file. It is beneficial to use some editor with XML support. I will use the same Notepad++.
(Note: Sometime text processing apps will automatically change all quote marks into typographically correct quotes (also sometimes called “curly quotes”). In ordinary language, this is usually correct. For computer code (HTML, XML, or programming language text), this is usually incorrect and will prevent your code from working as expected. When you are typing any type of code, if you see this conversion taking place, make sure you turn it off. Figure K1 shows two such settings.)
Here is how to find it:
(Figure L)
(Figure M)
Note: Sometime apps will “help” you by automatically adding a file type to any file name you enter. In the case of file you name as “notepad++.exe.xml”, this might result in the file being named “notepad++.exe.xml.xm“. For the advanced Touch Bar customization work, a file name like this will not work. You will have to ensure that the app does not add anything to the file name.
Now let’s verify it’s working. Reboot Windows, start your application, and check the Touch Bar.
If it’s working, you will see the following:
(Figure N)
Clicking the Button will quit the application in most cases.
If it doesn’t work, please make sure that you have done everything properly. If nothing helps, revert to the snapshot that you have created and repeat.
Customize the Button
For each button, we can customize the following:
id – Mandatory field. Unique identifier of the element.
width – Optional. Specifies the width of the button, in points.
image – Optional. Specifies the image on the button. See “Images”.
backColor – Optional. Specifies background color of the button in RRGGBB format.
textColor – Optional. Specifies text color of the button in RRGGBB format.
Attribute names are case sensitive.
keyCode
*Note: You must specify keyCode for every button you have.*
In the keyCode parameter, you can pass one key, several keys, or a combination of them. They will go to the applications as if you have typed/pressed them.
To pass a combination, use +.
<Button id=’button’ keyCode=’ctrl+alt+shift+X’ title=’Open in Firefox’/>
To pass “+”, use plus.
<Button id=’button’ keyCode=’plus’ title=’Enter a plus symbol’/>
<Button id=’button’ keyCode=’comma’ title=’Enter a comma symbol’/>
Here is a full list of keyCodes:
Characters: a-z
Numbers: 0-9
Functional keys: f1-f24
Other keys: /*=[]`.,comma,semicolon,ins,del,home,end,pgup,pgdown,prtSc,break,ctrl,alt,shift,win,fn,scroll_lock,esc,left,right,up,down,space,tab,minus,np_minus,plus,enter, www_back,www_forward,www_search,www_home,www_stop,www_refresh,www_favorites,app_mail,app_calculator,app_computer,menu.
title
This one is easy. Specify the title text you want to see on a button. If no title or image is specified, then the keyCode will be used as a title.
width
This one is easy, too. Specify the width of the button in points. You may need to play with this, but here are some examples to get an idea:
(Figure O)
image
You may use standard images as per Apple® documentation.
For example, I like the “Open in Browser” icon:
(Figure P)
I click a link and get a constant:
(Figure Q)
I then remove ImageName from the constant name and get “NSTouchBarOpenInBrowserTemplate”
Then I can add it to the Touch Bar button like this:
<Button id=’button’ keyCode=’ctrl+alt+shift+X’ title=’Open in Firefox’ image=’NSTouchBarOpenInBrowserTemplate’/>
Now Touch Bar will look like this:
(Figure R)
You may define custom images in xml file, but that won’t look pretty. Specify image=”base64:2x:<base64 encoded png image>”. Recommended image size is 36x36px; maximum is 60x60px.
I won’t dig into details here, but the Firefox icon will look like this:
(Figure S)
backColor and textColor
If you feel fancy, specify colors:
(Figure T)
<Button id=’button1′ keyCode=’1′ title=’Crimson on Ivory’ backColor=’FFFFF0′ textColor=’DC143C’/>
Add a Second Button
Adding the second button can be done by creating another copy of a Button section and adding its id to the list of defaultItemIdentifiers of the TouchBar element.
<Button id=’firefox’ keyCode=’ctrl+alt+shift+X’ title=’Launch in Firefox’/>
<Button id=’ie’ keyCode=’ctrl+alt+shift+I’ title=’Launch in IE’/>
Mac Touch Bar
<Button id=’chrome’ keyCode=’ctrl+alt+shift+R’ title=’Launch in Chrome’/>
</TouchBar>
More Customizations for Tech-Savvy Users
At this point, you should be good. But if you are tech-savvy and comfortable with stuff like this—and want to invest more time into your Touch Bar customization—there are more elements and things to play with.
TouchBar element
The root element of an XML document. Defines elements which are displayed on Touch Bar.
defaultItemIdentifiers – Mandatory. An array of comma-delimited identifiers of buttons included. Identifiers must point to the element of the document with the same “id” attribute or special identifiers:
Sometimes you want to see different Touch Bar sets based on the context you have in your application. Unfortunately, this is not possible at the moment.
If you create a useful set of Touch Bar buttons for your Windows application and feel like you want to share it with others, feel free to reply here or post on Parallels forums. We also encourage you to share on Facebook or Twitter and tag us to show us your work! We’d love to share it with other users.
Interested in using the Mac Touch Bar on your Mac with Windows programs? Try our 14-day free trial here!
I like the MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar, Apple’s baby step toward a touchscreen Mac that may never happen. It can be helpful (scrolling through a filmstrip of photo thumbnails) and fun (playing Pac-Man).
But the thin touch-sensitive screen that sits above the keyboard will remain a curiosity for most until it can partner with our most-used productivity applications, like Microsoft Office. Well, that's happening. Microsoft released a public update to Office that includes Touch Bar support on Thursday.
Customize Mac Touch Bar For Windows
SEE ALSO: MacBook Pro with Touch Bar banned from bar exam in multiple states
For those of you unfamiliar with Microsoft’s productivity suite on macOS, it’s just as powerful and smooth as it is on Microsoft’s Windows 10. If you’ve ever used Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook on Windows or even on the web via Office 365, the macOS version will be instantly familiar.
Test-driving Touch Bar support in Microsoft Office for Mac. Kind of fun. pic.twitter.com/EyxchoskWX
— Lance Ulanoff (@LanceUlanoff) February 14, 2017
Similarly, Touch Bar integration works just as you'd expect it to across the Office suite. On the beta version of the software I tried, I didn't have to do anything to activate Touch Bar controls. As expected, the Touch Bar's OLED screen adapts to the the specific app, but it also varies quite a bit within application tasks.
The limited screen real estate means you won’t find all the control you gain through the ribbon on Word or Excel, but that's kind of the point. The Touch Bar is there to surface what Microsoft assumes are your most often-used features. It’s sort of a visual manifestation of the 80/20 rule (80% of people use 20% of an app’s features).
Test driving Touch Bar integration in Microsoft Excel for Mac. I like the chart controls. #[email protected]/2g6l41Wvb0
— Lance Ulanoff (@LanceUlanoff) February 15, 2017
While you use the Touch Bar, the onscreen ribbon disappears, , since the actions you need are still there, and you get an bit of screen space back. For example, as I wrote this review I considered underlining the words “which is fine” in the previous sentence. That option, along with Bold, Italic, Highlight, Bullets, Text Color and even the Clipboard are all still a touch away. Additional menu choices like Comments and adding Hyperlinks are on the Touch Bar, too, but you'll need to slide to the left to see them — still faster than hunting it down with your trackpad or mouse.
I’m also pleased with how the Touch Bar transforms for specific tasks and, especially, how it can take some features in new directions.
Follow: If you insert a photo in Word or PowerPoint, the Touch Bar now gives you access to a real-time rotation slider. To rotate a photo incrementally, you just slide your finger back and forth on the Touch Bar. It’s a smart feature and fun to use.
Macbook Touch Bar Customization
In Excel, the Touch Bar supplies access to expected formatting options, but also extends to chart creation and editing. With the Touch Bar, I can do everything from selecting the kind of chart I want (bar, fever, area, scatter) to switching the data axes — each action takes a single tap. The Bar can handle Excel functions, too, but access to them is somewhat non-obvious. First, you need to type an equals sign in a cell, then a scrollable list of functions appears.
PowerPoint may have the best Touch Bar menu. I think I could almost create an entire presentation without accessing the traditional menu. The integration includes text formatting, bullet lists, the creation of new slides and text boxes. It even offers the ability to move objects back and forth in the object stack.
When it’s time to present, the Touch Bar shows you a presentation button. Tapping it transforms the Touch Bar into a thumbnail view of your presentation that you can slide through and tap on to bring any slide into view on the main screen. I also appreciate that Microsoft chose to add a clock on the Touch Bar so you can keep track of how long you’ve been presenting.
Test-driving @Microsoft PowerPoint with Touch Bar support on a MacBook Pro. The presentation mode is pretty cool. pic.twitter.com/BJcSLV5JTr
Macbook Touch Bar Settings
— Lance Ulanoff (@LanceUlanoff) February 16, 2017
I would like to see Microsoft add access to presenter notes on the Touch Bar.
Mac Touch Bar Customize Cursor
There are other limits, possibly imposed by Apple, on what Office for Mac can do with the Touch Bar. I was, for instance, surprised to see that when I tapped the insert image icon that, instead of seeing a film strip of image thumbnails on the bar, it just launched an on-screen dialogue box where I could access my image files.
Maybe future versions of the Office will let you customize your Touch Bar experience.
Word for the Mac’s Touch Bar also lacks QuickType word suggestions (oddly, Outlook for Mac has them). And despite Microsoft’s efforts to surface my most-used features, it did miss a big one: The ability to convert ALL CAPS TYPING to lower case, upper and lower, or sentence case. This is something I really, really need.
Mac Customize Touch Bar Outlook
You cannot currently change any of the Touch Bar menus. Maybe future versions of the Office will let you customize your Touch Bar experience.
To get the most out of this Office for Mac Touch Bar support, you must use it, consistently, which, for many, will be the biggest hurdle. I still find myself forgetting that the Touch Bar is there, mostly because I stare at the screen when I type. Perhaps if I use the MacBook Pro more often, tapping on the Touch Bar will become second nature. If that does happen I could see Touch Bar saving me some serious time in the Office for Mac suite.