Chosen Solution
I have an MBP 13" 2017 , which recently started showing a purple tint around the touch bar icons. It looks there is some sort of issue with it, as at times it just fades and flickers. Every function on the touch bar works as it is supposed to but there is some kind of issue with it. I have tried booting in safe mode, resetting SMC, NVRAM but the issue is still there. Finally, after a few chats with Apple support, I completely wiped out and did a fresh install of the OS. And after everything, the issue is still there. So it looks like it is some sort of hardware related failure.
I’m not very familiar with touchbar build, but I’d say you’re definitely right, looks like a hardware issue. Hard to tell if it ‘s the touchbar itself or some circuit feeding power/data to it. I’m afraid Apple would charge an arm and a leg to fix that. The other alternative would be find some independent lab into component level repairs but that’s not going to be very cheap either. It’s a bit alarming such a thing may happen on a less than 2 years old machine.
