appletbdrm

Unified DRM driver for Apple Touch Bar on MacBook Pro 2016-2020.

T1 (2016-2017) and T2 (2018-2020) MacBooks supported.

Model	Year	Chip	USB ID	Brightness
MacBook Pro 13" (A1706)	2016-2017	T1	05ac:8600	HID
MacBook Pro 15" (A1707)	2016-2017	T1	05ac:8600	HID
MacBook Pro 13/15/16"	2018-2020	T2	05ac:8302	hid_appletb_bl

Tested on MacbookPro14,2 ; MacbookPro16,1

• DRM framebuffer display
• Backlight control (T1: HID, T2: handled by hid_appletb_bl)
• T1: Auto-brightness preserved on boot
• T1: Automatic USB configuration switching

Kernel Patches (Touch Input)

Required for touch input. Use t2linux patches or a patched kernel.

• hid-appleib.c - T1 descriptor fixup (64-bit field split)
• hid-multitouch.c - MT_CLS_APPLE_TOUCHBAR touch class

T1 Notes

T1 iBridge boots in USB Configuration 1. The ibridge-switcher tool switches to Configuration 2 via systemd.

Brightness Protocols

T1 (HID Feature Reports on Interface 6):

• Report 5: AutoBrightness control
• Report 4: Absolute brightness in nits
• Report 3: Display ON/OFF state

T2: Backlight handled by separate hid_appletb_bl kernel driver.

Installation

Dependencies:

# Arch/Manjaro
sudo pacman -S dkms gcc libusb

# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt install dkms build-essential libusb-1.0-0-dev

Install:

sudo ./install.sh
sudo reboot

Status/Uninstall:

./install.sh status
sudo ./install.sh uninstall

Usage

Display appears as a DRM device, use with tiny-dfr or similar:

ls /dev/dri/card*

Brightness (auto-brightness enabled by default):

echo 128 | sudo tee /sys/class/backlight/appletb_backlight/brightness

License

GPL-2.0

Credits

• Kerem Karabay - Original appletbdrm protocol
• t2linux project - Kernel patches
• sunplex07 - T1 support, unified driver, rework.