Building a touchscreen into the MacBook Pro coming late this year will require significant changes to macOS 27. Some early details of what Apple has in store for macOS leaked out Tuesday from a generally reliable source.
The upcoming notebooks will supposedly be the first Macs with a Dynamic Island — but that’s just the start of what Apple has planned.
macOS 27 will bring a touchscreen-enabled redesign
According to numerous leaks and rumors, a MacBook Pro with a touchscreen is coming this fall. This device cannot use the current macOS user interface, as that was created for a mouse/trackpad and cursor, and is therefore filled with many icons that are simply too small for a fingertip.
At the same time, Apple must avoid the mistakes of Windows 8, in which Microsoft modified the operating system UI for everyone so that it worked better on touchscreen-enabled devices, resulting in massive frustration among the large majority of PC users without a touchscreen.
Apple’s clever solution is an adaptive interface that responds differently depending on whether someone is clicking with a cursor or interacting with a finger, according to information leaked to Bloomberg. This could allow the touchscreen MacBook Pro to function perfectly as a traditional laptop while unlocking useful new interactions never before possible on an Apple laptop.
How will it work? If a user taps on the MacBook screen with their finger, macOS 27 will reportedly generate a context-aware menu positioned around the touch point, surfacing options that are easier to access with a fingertip. And if a person taps an item in the menu bar at the top of the Mac’s screen, the set of controls will enlarge to be more easily selectable with a finger.
However, if the user clicks those same spots with a cursor, none of this will happen. When using a mouse or trackpad, macOS 27 will continue to look much as macOS 26 Tahoe does now, according to Bloomberg‘s sources inside Apple.
A touchscreen MacBook, not a MacPad
If these early details about macOS 27 prove correct, the touchscreen MacBook will still be a Mac, just with a new way to interact added on.
“The new MacBook Pro looks similar to the current model, including a full keyboard and large trackpad,” said Bloomberg.
To put it another way, the computer won’t be half Mac and half iPad. There’ll reportedly be no option to type by tapping on an on-screen keyboard, for example.
Instead, it seems Apple understands that in a world full of touchscreens — including the ones on iPhones and iPads — users have grown accustomed to tapping on their computer screens. With the upcoming touchscreen MacBook Pro, that won’t be a frustrating experience.
A Dynamic Island will replace the screen notch
Recent MacBook models come with a screen cutout similar to the notch that previously appeared on iPhone models. The late-2026 MacBook Pro will reportedly change that.
“The company’s initial touch Macs, due this fall, will have the Dynamic Island at the center top of the display,” reports Bloomberg.
It will supposedly work like the Dynamic Island on current iPhones, including offering notifications and other status updates. Apple introduced the Dynamic Island in 2022 with the iPhone 14 Pro, turning the black cutout for Face ID’s camera array into a surprisingly useful feature.
However, it remains unclear whether this means the first touchscreen Macs will also be the first Macs with Face ID. Current macOS laptops depend on Touch ID for biometric security. (See also: Apple, where the %@ is Face ID for MacBook?)
More about the touchscreen MacBook Pro
The touchscreen MacBook Pro is expected to be among the first with an Apple M6 processor, bringing a sizable jump in performance. Leaks also suggest the next-gen Mac laptop will feature a thinner, lighter chassis.
But don’t get too eager. While Apple is widely expected to introduce new MacBook Pro models in March, these will be “chip and ship” updates to the previous notebook — the same design upgraded with the M5 Pro and M5 Max processors. The touchscreen-enabled model isn’t expected until late this year or possibly early 2027.
Ed Hardy has been writing full-time about tech for 25 years, and using it for much longer than that. His intro to Apple was a Macintosh Classic II (which he still has), but now he uses a 13-inch iPad Pro as his primary computer. He’s written for NotebookReview, TabletPCReview, and Brighthand, as well as other sites.
