There is (was?) a utility that would flip individual F keys on the Mac, although it’s been years since I used it and who knows if it still works post Apple Silicon transition.

TBH, I kind of miss the touch bar. Once they restored the esc key, it was often kind of useful while I tend not to use any of the keys in the F row (even those mapped by IntelliJ since the whole fn+F key thing is a kind of a pain and I seldom have call for the media buttons—actually I just realized I do occcasionally use the mute/unmute feature but that’s about it).

Of course my preferences are normative and anyone who does otherwise is clearly abnormal ;-)

The Touch Bar was so useless* it's now selling like hotcakes as an accessory:

“Trigger actions, launch apps, and control your entire setup—all from a hyper-customizable deck of vibrant LCD keys.”

https://www.elgato.com/us/en/p/stream-deck

* Narrator: Not actually useless. Mine is setup for multi-screen chat/video/notes windows placement and app window sharing for video conferencing.

    > "There is (was?) a utility that would flip individual F keys on the Mac"
Function Flip: https://kevingessner.com/software/functionflip/