[HN Gopher] Turning a MacBook into a touchscreen with $1 of hard...
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Turning a MacBook into a touchscreen with $1 of hardware (2018)
Author : HughParry
Score : 132 points
Date : 2026-03-30 19:22 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (anishathalye.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (anishathalye.com)
| als0 wrote:
| Still an amazing hack today and I love it. However, I heard Apple
| are developing a touch screen MacBook this year, and I simply
| don't get why they're doing that. I don't know what's worse, the
| ergonomics or the fingerprints.
| bardackx wrote:
| i used to have a bad touch screen laptop like 7 years ago and
| back then it made the mobile development more pleasant (both
| native and web based)
| Etheryte wrote:
| So you mean they're developing the iPad, an insanely popular
| device, and you're not sure why they would make such a device?
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I have been around touch screen Windows laptops for I don't
| know how many years now, and I have never felt even the
| slightest compulsion to touch the screen.
| bigfishrunning wrote:
| It might be a generational thing; my kids get touchscreen
| laptops from their school, and they interact with them
| almost exclusively by touching the screen. I agree, I'd
| much rather use a mouse (or even better, a trackball; i
| wish most laptops still had those)
| t1234s wrote:
| Is there a coating you can apply to the glass to help with smudge
| marks?
| rappatic wrote:
| Oleophobic coating is standard on phones and tablets, which is
| part of why they don't pick up fingerprints as easily.
|
| Some brands offer coating you can DIY yourself (eg ProofTech
| OLEOPEL) but these seem mostly designed for phone screens. I
| don't know whether they'd be as effective on laptop screens
| dotancohen wrote:
| And this is why modern screens (and eyeglasses) should be
| cleaned with a damp microfiber cloth and no aggressive
| cleaners. These coatings are fragile.
|
| I do carefully clean the nosepads with soapy water, however.
| anandkulkarni wrote:
| Brilliant!
| spidermonkey23 wrote:
| Using an external webcam is that not more than $1? cool project
| though; reminds me of how you could use a Wii remote to create a
| interactive whiteboard.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Internal with a small mirror
| solfox wrote:
| Love it! I appreciate the ethos of doing more with existing
| hardware. Adding an actual touchscreen would add real COGs to a
| macbook, and many potential failure points. Using the existing
| camera hardware + software seems to produce a "good enough"
| result for most people for casual use. I'm sure with some time
| and eng, Apple could make the "hack" shippable. But it doesn't
| earn product managers the big big bonuses, so it'll never happen.
| egypturnash wrote:
| I wonder how well this would work with my bright blue fingernails
| that are about .5" longer than my finger.
|
| I then wonder how much recalibration I would have to do when one
| of them broke and I was poking directly at the screen.
| Synthetic7346 wrote:
| You could still use the keyboard and track pad
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| Checking this profile of a random hacker in 2018, of course they
| are now working on AI.
| anishathalye wrote:
| I was working on AI in 2018 too :)
|
| At that time, I was quite interested in adversarial examples
| and ML security.
| dotBen wrote:
| I wouldn't want a touchscreen MBP even if it was free, anyone
| else feel similar?
|
| I don't get the draw - we already optimize for keyboard commands
| to avoid living our fingers over to a touchpad. Why would I want
| to start clicking on my screen?
|
| If you're using your computer for tasks (rather than
| entertainment) and you're not a visual designer, I don't get why
| Apple are apparently going to be putting them into the new MBP
| line later this year.
| post-it wrote:
| > I don't get why Apple are apparently going to be putting them
| into the new MBP line later this year.
|
| Apple has apparently being going to put a touchscreen in a
| laptop every year since the iPad came out, and it's never
| materialized.
| xmprt wrote:
| Previously, those were rumors from enthusiasts who _wanted_
| to see it. Now it 's an internal leak so there's a lot more
| credibility to those rumors.
| hu3 wrote:
| No, there were internal "leaks" in the past as well.
|
| https://archive.ph/xOgtp
| jacobgkau wrote:
| > January 11, 2023
|
| > Based on current internal deliberations, the company
| could launch its first touch-screen Mac in 2025
|
| Even if it didn't come to pass, just a few years ago is a
| more relevant leak than the every-year-since-the-iPad-
| released "rumors."
| hu3 wrote:
| Yes and it's an article about a leak 3 years ago. And
| there were more "leaks" before that. I just can't be
| bothered to research and link the obvious to argument
| against an "opinion".
| xmprt wrote:
| > Based on current internal deliberations, the company
| could launch its first touch-screen Mac in 2025
|
| It looks like those leaks aren't too far off what I'm
| saying. Deadlines slipping by 1-2 years isn't way off
| especially for such a new/different product direction.
| And the rumor also said "could" which means even
| internally, it wasn't a strong claim.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Macs are definitely not optimized for keyboard commands. If you
| feel the software you use is keyboard optimized, odds are it's
| not really Mac software.
| 9dev wrote:
| Huh? Of all the wonky shit about my Mac, the flawless
| keyboard navigation is really none of that
| devmor wrote:
| "Flawless" is absolutely the opposite of how I'd describe
| the third class keyboard navigation in MacOS.
|
| It's actually more intuitive to use a magic keyboard on the
| iPad than on the desktop OS.
| sitharus wrote:
| What do you find missing from macOS keyboard navigation?
|
| I've been using macs since the 90s so I'm quite used to
| it, so I'd love to know what I've been missing out on.
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| Sometimes, if I've been using my iPad for awhile and switch
| over to my MBP, I might reach out and touch the screen out of
| habit. I can't be the only one.
| antonymoose wrote:
| I had the opposite problem when work issued me a ThinkPad - I
| would accidentally brush my screen with my caveman knuckles
| once a day and somehow nuke a dozen lines of code.
| radley wrote:
| It just feels ancient and weird now that I can tap every screen
| I own, except my Mac. I don't want to replace the Mac's
| keyboard & mouse with a touchscreen, I would simply like it to
| support touch.
|
| (This also made me realize the impending obsolescence of the
| Studio Monitor XDR: _no touch support_.)
| eitally wrote:
| I very much would want a touchscreen for my use cases.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I don't understand touchscreens on laptops that aren't designed
| to fold flat. It's got the feel of finger painting an
| unconstrained birthday balloon.
| harr01 wrote:
| The benefit of a touchscreen MBP is that Apple will be forced
| to make their screens more protective.
| fortran77 wrote:
| All my Windows laptops have touch screens and I love it. What
| is the problem with having another input method available? You
| only use it when it's appropriate.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I wouldn't want a touch screen to become the primary input
| device, but I think it would be useful on occasion. Not
| entirely unlike how we still have touchpads even though we try
| to use keyboard commands.
| lysace wrote:
| The ergonomic aspects are horrible. I believe there's actual
| research on this from the 70s/80s/90s.
| skwallace36 wrote:
| as long as it works well, would rather have it than not (but
| don't want to pay extra, so yeah... leave it out)
| nothrowaways wrote:
| Touch screens are not pleasant for laptops. I prefer not to have
| them.
| gavinsyancey wrote:
| You don't have to use it.
| nothrowaways wrote:
| you will accidentally touch the screen more often that you
| think.
| criddell wrote:
| As long as there's a way to maintain the current display
| density, that would be just fine.
|
| However, like on Windows, I suspect macOS would increase the
| tap target size on lots of the touchable elements. Even if I
| don't use the touchscreen, I would still have to pay the
| touch target real estate tax in my applications.
| hntway90904 wrote:
| That's a fair ask. My dream would be a simple toggle in
| something like control center for macOS that can flip
| between "touch mode" and "desktop mode" with most of the
| under the hood stuff being the same and just UI changes for
| the task. No doubt this would create new hurdles for
| software devs but again I'm dreaming here. Windows 10
| actually had this with "tablet mode" in the notification
| center but I think they already soured people on the touch
| Windows thing by this point. I think Apple could reasonable
| do it better if they had the will but they'd much rather
| you buy and iPad for touch and a mac for desktop and
| everyone who doesn't want an extra device for certain use
| cases is left out in the rain.
| dataflow wrote:
| Note on Windows you can disable the touch device and it
| goes back to the old density. Don't know if Macs support
| it.
| mrtksn wrote:
| It's actually quite pleasant user experience for scrolling.
| Some interactions are better with a pointer, others are better
| with touch.
|
| You can try it on an iPad with Magic Keyboard attached, it's
| very good to be able to do precision through the trackpad and
| then casually move large things on the screen with your
| fingers.
| nothrowaways wrote:
| Agree for iPad. But for a laptop trackpads ftw!
| prmoustache wrote:
| Honestly I just hate having fingerprints on a screen. And I
| use pageup/pagedown mostly which to me is better than
| scrolling.
|
| Trackpad is nice for a device you can lay flat on a table or
| keep on one hand while sitting on the sofa, not too much when
| the device has a keyboard permanently attached to it and it
| cannot fold. I know I have a thinkpad like that and I never
| use the touchscreen.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Yesterday someone online told me I'm a boomer because
| (among the many other issues I mentioned) I said that apple
| computers lack page up/down keys which is annoying.
| genthree wrote:
| Option-up/option-down?
|
| Two keys rather than one, but makes up for it by not
| being way off in some oddball part of the keyboard. You
| can one-hand it pretty easily, since there's an "option"
| right next to the arrow keys.
| long-time-first wrote:
| This is amazing. They should start to install upward looking
| cameras to implement this officially.
| ForOldHack wrote:
| I think I could do this for less than 15 cents: four small peices
| of double sided tape, and the tiny mirror, and two hair pins...
| but the software? Priceless.
| JaredCampbell wrote:
| It feels real because of the dirty touchscreen.
| rox_kd wrote:
| Neeeeveeeer!!! please let macbooks be as they are .. why would I
| ever choose to put fingers on that beautful screen ... I don't
| get it!
| bigyabai wrote:
| > why would I ever choose to put fingers on that beautful
| screen ... I don't get it!
|
| I'm not sure, but bare in mind that the iPad is almost as large
| of a market as the Mac at this point, and the iPhone has long
| surpassed Mac revenue. Touching your computer is a very popular
| sentiment among the grimy-handed public.
| ianberdin wrote:
| I was laughing so much. Thank you. Unexpected tech!
| callamdelaney wrote:
| The reason we buy macbooks is because they aren't touchscreens.
| Jabrov wrote:
| What a super neat application of computer vision. Cool writeup.
| Thanks for sharing the code and making it open source too!
| joaohaas wrote:
| As other people mentioned this is obviously not something I would
| want in my notebook... but I can still appreciate the cool tech!
|
| I can also definitely see this kind of thing being used in things
| budget outdoor displays, specially if the UI is made to
| accommodate the lack of accuracy, and the camera is positioned on
| the side (since these displays are usually vertical).
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(page generated 2026-03-30 23:00 UTC)