Apple has officially released the first public beta of macOS 27 Golden Gate, giving everyday users their first hands-on look at the next major version of the Mac operating system. The update, announced at WWDC 2026 in June, follows three developer betas and focuses on polishing the Liquid Glass design language introduced last year, expanding Apple Intelligence capabilities, and delivering a smarter Siri experience.
Key New Features in macOS 27 Golden Gate
• Refined Liquid Glass Design: One of the biggest complaints about macOS Tahoe (26) was its inconsistent and sometimes overly aggressive transparency effects. Golden Gate introduces a new system-wide slider that lets users control the opacity of Liquid Glass UI elements — from fully transparent to heavily frosted. Windows now feature more consistent rounded corners, edge-to-edge sidebars with colorful icons return, and overall readability and contrast have been significantly improved.
• Siri AI Takes Center Stage: The headline feature is the new Siri AI, powered by an enhanced Apple Intelligence architecture. Siri now has its own dedicated app for conversational history, integrates deeply into Spotlight (with a “Search or Ask” interface), and can understand context from your Messages, Mail, files, and even what’s visible on your screen via Visual Intelligence. It also gains improved writing tools, natural language Shortcuts, and better on-device processing.
• Search and Performance Boosts: Apple completely rebuilt the indexing system, addressing longstanding Spotlight and Finder reliability issues. Search is faster and more accurate, AirDrop transfers are quicker, network file browsing feels snappier, and the system overall feels more responsive.
Additional Enhancements
• Redesigned writing tools and expanded Apple Intelligence features across Safari, Photos, and more.
• New Golden Gate-themed wallpapers and screen savers (including dynamic Sunset and Night versions).
• Improved parental controls, Screen Time, and privacy features.
• Better support for Apple silicon Macs only — Intel support has officially ended.
Compatibility
macOS Golden Gate requires an Apple silicon Mac:
• MacBook Air (2020 and later)
• MacBook Pro (2020 and later)
• iMac (2021 and later)
• Mac mini (2020 and later)
• Mac Studio (2022 and later)
• Mac Pro (2023 and later)
• New MacBook Neo (2026) models
How to Install the Public Beta
Back up your Mac using Time Machine.
Visit beta.apple.com and enroll your device in the Apple Beta Software Program.
Go to System Settings > General > Software Update.
Click the info button next to Beta Updates and select macOS 27 Golden Gate Public Beta.
Download and install when ready.
Apple warns that beta software may contain bugs and is not recommended for primary devices. Users should install on a secondary Mac or separate APFS volume for safety.
MacDailyNews Take: The public beta cycle will continue through the summer, with the final release expected in September or October 2026 alongside iOS 27 and other updates. Early feedback suggests Golden Gate is shaping up to be a strong refinement-focused release that addresses many Tahoe criticisms while pushing AI capabilities forward.
If you’re eager to try the new features, the public beta is now live — just proceed with caution – users should install on a secondary Mac or separate APFS volume for safety.
Please help support MacDailyNews — and enjoy subscriber-only articles, comments, chat, and more — by subscribing to our Substack: macdailynews.substack.com. Thank you!
Apple has opened the public beta program for MacOS 27 Golden Gate to all curious Mac users. While betas are typically best reserved for advanced users due to being buggier and less stable than final builds, the public beta program offers an opportunity for users to experience beta development and upcoming features, ahead of the ... Read More
MacOS Golden Gate 27 has four new default wallpaper options for you to enjoy. This includes two abstract images that closely match the iOS 27 default wallpaper, and shipped with the first betas, and two new landscape wallpapers of the namesake Golden Gate Bridge; one during sunset, and one at night. They’re all really quite ... Read More
The third beta version of MacOS Golden Gate 27 has been released to users enrolled in the developer beta testing program for Apple system software. MacOS 27 beta 3 carries build 26A5378j, and is available to download now through Software Update, a package installer, or IPSW. MacOS Golden Gate 27 has an emphasis on improving ... Read More
macOS Golden Gate Beta 27.0 Beta 3 (26A5378j) is now Available!
UPDATED: 07/06/26
Apple has released the third developer beta of macOS Golden Gate with more refinements to the new interface and AI features.
Beta 3 further improves the Liquid Glass design with better readability, updated window styling, and a new transparency slider that lets you control the amount of the glass effect.
Apple is also expanding Siri AI on the Mac. It now lives in Spotlight, has its own app for conversations, can answer questions about your files and what’s on your screen, and can help with writing.
This beta also includes additional AI features across apps like Photos, Safari, Passwords, and Image Playground as Apple continues preparing macOS Golden Gate for its public beta next month.
Table of Contents
OCLP Users Warning
Should You Install macOS Golden Gate?
Full Apple Update Release List
What’s New in macOS Golden Gate?
Apple macOS Golden Gate Links
macOS Golden Gate Beta Release History
macOS Golden Gate Full Installer.app
Apple Silicon macOS Golden Gate IPSW Restore File
macOS Golden Gate Update Sizes
Apple Silicon Firmware & iBoot Versions
Safari Version
Security Content of macOS Golden Gate
macOS Golden Gate Release Notes
Final Notes
NOTE: I hate website ads, but this one small Google ad below helps me with the cost of running Mr. Macintosh.com. Thank you!
1. OCLP Users Warning
OpenCore Legacy Patcher is not compatible with macOS Golden Gate or macOS Tahoe. Make sure you go into System Settings > Software Update and turn off Download Updates and Install macOS Updates.
If you use OCLP on an unsupported Mac, wait for official OpenCore Legacy Patcher 3.0.0 testing and compatibility information before attempting to install.
2. Should You Install macOS Golden Gate Beta?
Most users should not install macOS Golden Gate Beta on their main Mac. This is early beta software, which means apps may crash, battery life may be reduced, accessories may not work correctly, and some features may be unfinished.
Install it only if you have a test Mac, a full backup, and a reason to test the new release early. I recommend two types of backups: Time Machine & A direct copy of your important files and apps
This might seem like a lot, but TRUST ME, it will be worth it if something goes wrong!
MacAdmins, developers, and advanced users can begin testing app compatibility, MDM enrollment, security tools, VPN clients, printers, FileVault workflows, software update behavior, and deployment processes.
3. Full Apple Update Release List
Beta 3
macOS Golden Gate 27.0 (26A5378j)
iOS 27.0 ()
iPadOS 27.0 ()
tvOS 27.0 ()
homePodOS 27.0 ()
visionOS 27.0 ()
watchOS 27.0 ()
Safari
Safari 27.0
Developer Tools
Xcode 27 beta
Command Line Tools for Xcode 27 beta
4. What’s New in macOS Golden Gate Beta 3?
Apple has released the 3rd developer beta of macOS Golden Gate 27.
New Features & Changes
Liquid Glass Design Updates
macOS Golden Gate brings a more polished Liquid Glass design with better readability, improved contrast, more consistent toolbars, edge-to-edge sidebars, updated window shapes, and refreshed menu bar icons. Apple has also added a new slider that lets you adjust the Liquid Glass look from very clear to fully tinted.
Performance Improvements
Apple says the system should feel faster overall, with quicker AirDrop transfers, faster network file browsing, faster Safari start page loading, improved Mail search ranking, and better Spotlight search suggestions.
Siri AI on Mac
The biggest new feature is Siri AI on Mac. Siri can now answer more natural questions, understand personal context, take actions inside apps, work from Spotlight, and live inside a new dedicated Siri app for longer conversations.
Visual Intelligence
Visual Intelligence is also coming to the Mac, letting you ask questions about what’s on your screen and get help based on the content you’re looking at.
Writing Tools & Apple Intelligence
Golden Gate expands Writing Tools with Siri, adds better AI photo editing, improves Image Playground, and lets you create Shortcuts from plain-language descriptions.
Safari & Passwords
Safari gets smarter tab grouping, page-change alerts, and faster start page loading. Apple is also adding one-click password fixes to help update weak or reused passwords more easily.
Family, Safety & Accessibility
Golden Gate includes stronger child safety controls, improved Screen Time features, and new accessibility improvements across the system.
Other Notable Changes
Other smaller changes include ultrawide display upgrades, better iCloud Shared Albums, Call Context, enhanced Flyover in Maps, swipe-to-refresh in more apps, and a refreshed video podcasts experience.
5. Apple macOS Golden Gate Links
Official links will be added as Apple publishes more macOS Golden Gate documentation.
Apple Developer Site — macOS 27
macOS Beta Program Information
Apple Security Updates Page
Apple macOS Golden Gate Features Page
6. macOS Golden Gate Beta Release History
macOS Golden Gate 27.0 Beta 2
Version: macOS Golden Gate 27.0 Beta 2
Build: 26A5368g
Release Date: 06/22/26
Release Type: Developer Beta
macOS Golden Gate 27.0 Beta 1
Version: macOS Golden Gate 27.0 Beta 1
Build: 26A5353q
Release Date: 06/09/26
Release Type: Developer Beta
7. macOS Golden Gate Full Installer.app
The full installer is useful if you want to create a USB installer, install macOS Golden Gate on another Mac, or archive the installer for testing.
Use this link to download the latest version of macOS Golden Gate Full installer AKA InstallAssistant.pkg
8. Apple Silicon macOS Golden Gate IPSW Restore File
An IPSW restore file is mainly used to restore or revive Apple Silicon Macs with Apple Configurator, Finder, or another Mac.
Most users do not need the IPSW file for normal macOS updates. IPSW files are intended for restores, revives, troubleshooting, clean installs, and testing workflows.
Use this link to download the full Mac IPSW restore file directly from Apple:
If you install macOS Golden Gate Beta 2, make sure you have a full backup before proceeding. Beta software can cause app compatibility issues, performance problems, and data loss. Do not install this beta on your main Mac unless you are comfortable troubleshooting and restoring macOS.
macOS Golden Gate Beta 27.0 Beta 2 is now Available!
UPDATED: 06/22/26
Apple has released the second developer beta of macOS Golden Gate with more refinements to the new interface and AI features.
Beta 2 further improves the Liquid Glass design with better readability, updated window styling, and a new transparency slider that lets you control the amount of the glass effect.
Apple is also expanding Siri AI on the Mac. It now lives in Spotlight, has its own app for conversations, can answer questions about your files and what’s on your screen, and can help with writing.
This beta also includes additional AI features across apps like Photos, Safari, Passwords, and Image Playground as Apple continues preparing macOS Golden Gate for its public beta next month.
Table of Contents
OCLP Users Warning
Should You Install macOS Golden Gate?
Full Apple Update Release List
What’s New in macOS Golden Gate?
Apple macOS Golden Gate Links
macOS Golden Gate Beta Release History
macOS Golden Gate Full Installer.app
Apple Silicon macOS Golden Gate IPSW Restore File
macOS Golden Gate Update Sizes
Apple Silicon Firmware & iBoot Versions
Safari Version
Security Content of macOS Golden Gate
macOS Golden Gate Release Notes
Final Notes
NOTE: I hate website ads, but this one small Google ad below helps me with the cost of running Mr. Macintosh.com. Thank you!
1. OCLP Users Warning
OpenCore Legacy Patcher is not compatible with macOS Golden Gate or macOS Tahoe. Make sure you go into System Settings > Software Update and turn off Download Updates and Install macOS Updates.
If you use OCLP on an unsupported Mac, wait for official OpenCore Legacy Patcher 3.0.0 testing and compatibility information before attempting to install.
2. Should You Install macOS Golden Gate Beta?
Most users should not install macOS Golden Gate Beta 1 on their main Mac. This is early beta software, which means apps may crash, battery life may be reduced, accessories may not work correctly, and some features may be unfinished.
Install it only if you have a test Mac, a full backup, and a reason to test the new release early. I recommend two types of backups: Time Machine & A direct copy of your important files and apps
This might seem like a lot, but TRUST ME, it will be worth it if something goes wrong!
MacAdmins, developers, and advanced users can begin testing app compatibility, MDM enrollment, security tools, VPN clients, printers, FileVault workflows, software update behavior, and deployment processes.
3. Full Apple Update Release List
Beta 2
macOS Golden Gate 27.0 (26A5368g)
iOS 27.0 (24A5370h)
iPadOS 27.0 (24A5370h)
tvOS 27.0 (24J5305f)
homePodOS 27.0 (24J5305f)
visionOS 27.0 (24M5306i)
watchOS 27.0 (Waiting)
Safari
Safari 27.0
Developer Tools
Xcode 27 beta
Command Line Tools for Xcode 27 beta
4. What’s New in macOS Golden Gate Beta 2?
Apple has released the 2nd developer beta of macOS Golden Gate 27.
New Features & Changes
Liquid Glass Design Updates
macOS Golden Gate brings a more polished Liquid Glass design with better readability, improved contrast, more consistent toolbars, edge-to-edge sidebars, updated window shapes, and refreshed menu bar icons. Apple has also added a new slider that lets you adjust the Liquid Glass look from very clear to fully tinted.
Performance Improvements
Apple says the system should feel faster overall, with quicker AirDrop transfers, faster network file browsing, faster Safari start page loading, improved Mail search ranking, and better Spotlight search suggestions.
Siri AI on Mac
The biggest new feature is Siri AI on Mac. Siri can now answer more natural questions, understand personal context, take actions inside apps, work from Spotlight, and live inside a new dedicated Siri app for longer conversations.
Visual Intelligence
Visual Intelligence is also coming to the Mac, letting you ask questions about what’s on your screen and get help based on the content you’re looking at.
Writing Tools & Apple Intelligence
Golden Gate expands Writing Tools with Siri, adds better AI photo editing, improves Image Playground, and lets you create Shortcuts from plain-language descriptions.
Safari & Passwords
Safari gets smarter tab grouping, page-change alerts, and faster start page loading. Apple is also adding one-click password fixes to help update weak or reused passwords more easily.
Family, Safety & Accessibility
Golden Gate includes stronger child safety controls, improved Screen Time features, and new accessibility improvements across the system.
Other Notable Changes
Other smaller changes include ultrawide display upgrades, better iCloud Shared Albums, Call Context, enhanced Flyover in Maps, swipe-to-refresh in more apps, and a refreshed video podcasts experience.
5. Apple macOS Golden Gate Links
Official links will be added as Apple publishes more macOS Golden Gate documentation.
Apple Developer Site — macOS 27
macOS Beta Program Information
Apple Security Updates Page
Apple macOS Golden Gate Features Page
6. macOS Golden Gate Beta Release History
macOS Golden Gate 27.0 Beta 2
Version: macOS Golden Gate 27.0 Beta 2
Build: 26A5368g
Release Date: 06/22/26
Release Type: Developer Beta
macOS Golden Gate 27.0 Beta 1
Version: macOS Golden Gate 27.0 Beta 1
Build: 26A5353q
Release Date: 06/09/26
Release Type: Developer Beta
7. macOS Golden Gate Full Installer.app
The full installer is useful if you want to create a USB installer, install macOS Golden Gate on another Mac, or archive the installer for testing.
Use this link to download the latest version of macOS Golden Gate Full installer AKA InstallAssistant.pkg
8. Apple Silicon macOS Golden Gate IPSW Restore File
An IPSW restore file is mainly used to restore or revive Apple Silicon Macs with Apple Configurator, Finder, or another Mac.
Most users do not need the IPSW file for normal macOS updates. IPSW files are intended for restores, revives, troubleshooting, clean installs, and testing workflows.
Use this link to download the full Mac IPSW restore file directly from Apple:
If you install macOS Golden Gate Beta 2, make sure you have a full backup before proceeding. Beta software can cause app compatibility issues, performance problems, and data loss. Do not install this beta on your main Mac unless you are comfortable troubleshooting and restoring macOS.
Apple has released the first developer beta of macOS Golden Gate Beta 27. This is the first major beta release of Apple’s next version of macOS.
Sadly, this will be the first macOS release in almost 20 years, and 17 macOS releases, that does not support Intel devices. We all knew this was coming, but it is still a bummer for sure.
Golden Gate is looking like a Snow Leopard-type release that focuses on performance across the system, including a rebuilt search index that should make Spotlight, Mail, Photos, and other search-heavy areas feel faster and more reliable. Apple also reworked a lot of the Liquid Glass interface, which was needed for sure. We now have a slider like iOS has, so we can use more or less of the glass effect.
The main story, though, is Siri AI finally becoming more useful on the Mac. It’s built into Spotlight, available as its own app for longer conversations, and can help with writing, file questions, Visual Intelligence shortcuts, and more contextual actions. Golden Gate also brings stronger Screen Time and parental controls, but there’s a major compatibility note: this looks like the end of Intel Mac support, and the newest
Table of Contents
OCLP Users Warning
Should You Install macOS Golden Gate?
Full Apple Update Release List
What’s New in macOS Golden Gate?
Apple macOS Golden Gate Links
macOS Golden Gate Beta Release History
macOS Golden Gate Full Installer.app
Apple Silicon macOS Golden Gate IPSW Restore File
macOS Golden Gate Update Sizes
Apple Silicon Firmware & iBoot Versions
Safari Version
Security Content of macOS Golden Gate
macOS Golden Gate Release Notes
Final Notes
NOTE: I hate website ads, but this one small Google ad below helps me with the cost of running Mr. Macintosh.com. Thank you!
1. OCLP Users Warning
OpenCore Legacy Patcher is not compatible with macOS Golden Gate or macOS Tahoe. Make sure you go into System Settings > Software Update and turn off Download Updates and Install macOS Updates.
If you use OCLP on an unsupported Mac, wait for official OpenCore Legacy Patcher 3.0.0 testing and compatibility information before attempting to install.
2. Should You Install macOS Golden Gate Beta?
Most users should not install macOS Golden Gate Beta 1 on their main Mac. This is early beta software, which means apps may crash, battery life may be reduced, accessories may not work correctly, and some features may be unfinished.
Install it only if you have a test Mac, a full backup, and a reason to test the new release early. I recommend two types of backups: Time Machine & A direct copy of your important files and apps
This might seem like a lot, but TRUST ME, it will be worth it if something goes wrong!
MacAdmins, developers, and advanced users can begin testing app compatibility, MDM enrollment, security tools, VPN clients, printers, FileVault workflows, software update behavior, and deployment processes.
3. Full Apple Update Release List
macOS
macOS Golden Gate 27.0 Beta 1 — 26A5353q
macOS Tahoe 26.6 Beta 1 — Same version
macOS Sequoia 15.7.8 Beta 1 — Same version
Safari
Safari 27.0
Developer Tools
Xcode 27 beta
Command Line Tools for Xcode 27 beta
4. What’s New in macOS Golden Gate Beta 1?
Apple has released the first developer beta of macOS Golden Gate 27.
New Features & Changes
Liquid Glass Design Updates
macOS Golden Gate brings a more polished Liquid Glass design with better readability, improved contrast, more consistent toolbars, edge-to-edge sidebars, updated window shapes, and refreshed menu bar icons. Apple has also added a new slider that lets you adjust the Liquid Glass look from very clear to fully tinted.
Performance Improvements
Apple says the system should feel faster overall, with quicker AirDrop transfers, faster network file browsing, faster Safari start page loading, improved Mail search ranking, and better Spotlight search suggestions.
Siri AI on Mac
The biggest new feature is Siri AI on Mac. Siri can now answer more natural questions, understand personal context, take actions inside apps, work from Spotlight, and live inside a new dedicated Siri app for longer conversations.
Visual Intelligence
Visual Intelligence is also coming to the Mac, letting you ask questions about what’s on your screen and get help based on the content you’re looking at.
Writing Tools & Apple Intelligence
Golden Gate expands Writing Tools with Siri, adds better AI photo editing, improves Image Playground, and lets you create Shortcuts from plain-language descriptions.
Safari & Passwords
Safari gets smarter tab grouping, page-change alerts, and faster start page loading. Apple is also adding one-click password fixes to help update weak or reused passwords more easily.
Family, Safety & Accessibility
Golden Gate includes stronger child safety controls, improved Screen Time features, and new accessibility improvements across the system.
Other Notable Changes
Other smaller changes include ultrawide display upgrades, better iCloud Shared Albums, Call Context, enhanced Flyover in Maps, swipe-to-refresh in more apps, and a refreshed video podcasts experience.
5. Apple macOS Golden Gate Links
Official links will be added as Apple publishes more macOS Golden Gate documentation.
Apple Developer Site — macOS 27
macOS Beta Program Information
Apple Security Updates Page
Apple macOS Golden Gate Features Page
6. macOS Golden Gate Beta Release History
macOS Golden Gate 27.0 Beta 1
Version: macOS Golden Gate 27.0 Beta 1
Build: 26A5353q
Release Date: 06/08/26
Release Type: Developer Beta
7. macOS Golden Gate Full Installer.app
The full installer is useful if you want to create a USB installer, install macOS Golden Gate on another Mac, or archive the installer for testing.
Use this link to download the latest version of macOS Golden Gate Full installer AKA InstallAssistant.pkg
8. Apple Silicon macOS Golden Gate IPSW Restore File
An IPSW restore file is mainly used to restore or revive Apple Silicon Macs with Apple Configurator, Finder, or another Mac.
Most users do not need the IPSW file for normal macOS updates. IPSW files are intended for restores, revives, troubleshooting, clean installs, and testing workflows.
Use this link to download the full Mac IPSW restore file directly from Apple:
If you install macOS Golden Gate Beta 1, make sure you have a full backup before proceeding. Beta software can cause app compatibility issues, performance problems, and data loss. Do not install this beta on your main Mac unless you are comfortable troubleshooting and restoring macOS.
Download the macOS Golden Gate Full Installer – Public & Beta Versions.
This database will contain download links for macOS full Installer pkg files (InstallAssistant.pkg). This file is the same full installer that you would download directly from the App Store for Intel and Apple Silicon M1/M2/M3/M4 Mac Computers. The InstallAssistant.pkg is stored on Apple’s servers and contains the full “Install macOS.app”. Once downloaded, all you need to do is install the pkg and the full installer of macOS will be in your applications folder. This change was made when Apple revised the full installer for Big Sur. The InstallAssistant.pkg is not available for Catalina or Mojave.
UPDATED: 08/10/26
NOTE: I hate website ads, but this one small google ad below helps me with the cost of running Mr. Macintosh.com. Thank you!
NOTE:Depending on the browser you are using, you might need to right click and select “Copy link address”. Past this link into a new tab and it should start to download.
Depois de já termos publicado vários vídeos sobre as novidades do iOS 27, chegou a vez de começarmos a cobertura em vídeo do macOS Golden Gate 27 em nosso canal. E não tem jeito melhor de abrir essa série do que falando sobre a mudança mais aguardada do sistema: a Siri AI.
Neste primeiro vídeo, mostramos como funciona o novo app da Siri, os ajustes de voz disponíveis, as melhorias na busca do Spotlight, os recursos da Inteligência Visual a partir de screenshots e as ferramentas de escrita e revisão de texto integradas ao sistema.
Let’s just get this out of the way: I liked macOS 26 Tahoe. I liked it because it marked the first time in years where Apple seemed to embrace the fact that Mac users deserve productivity improvements, not just syncing up with whatever (often useful, yes) new features were being introduced to iOS.
I didn’t like the interface changes, especially the way the redesign handled toolbars and sidebars. It actually felt like macOS dodged a bullet by being treated as an afterthought, because pouring more Liquid Glass atop macOS would have made the situation even worse. But over the last summer, I got used to the interface offenses and instead focused on all the improvements.
Turns out that at least some of my friends and colleagues decided that Tahoe’s interface offenses were too great to bear, and despite all those tasty new productivity boosts, they would sit this one out and hope that Apple came to its senses with macOS 27.
Good news for them: While they’ve spent a year without Apple’s first native clipboard history, Shortcuts automation and AI access, and an improved Spotlight, their upgrade to macOS 27 Golden Gate will net them last year’s features as well as a host of other improvements, all wrapped in an interface that is an unequivocal improvement over what Tahoe wrought.
To those folks, welcome back to the current OS version. To those of us who spent a year floating on the glassy surface of Tahoe, welcome to Golden Gate. Available today as a Public Beta and arriving on every Apple silicon-based Mac this fall, it’s an update I’m not going to have to spend a year apologizing for liking.
Design takes a step forward
The fact that there are more design changes in macOS than any of Apple’s other 27 updates speaks volumes about how broken many of the Tahoe design decisions were. Apple describes the design as “even more refined,” because in Apple marketing-speak, broken features are never remedied or fixed—past features are just improved. The truth is, Apple has rolled back numerous missteps and made changes to others to mitigate the issues they caused.
Floating glass sidebars inset from window edges—a choice that made sense metaphorically, but looked awful—are gone, essentially reverted to their previous design, sitting at the left edge of windows, with a darker background for contrast and colored icons to boot.
Compare and contrast macOS Tahoe (top) and macOS Golden Gate (bottom): Windows are a little less rounded, toolbars float a little more clearly and buttons are more defined, and sidebar icons are colored.
Toolbars, one of the most important interface conventions of macOS, were flattened and ghostly in Tahoe. In Golden Gate, they pick up better shading and are more legible, though (strangely) the toolbar in inactive windows offers more contrast and legibility than in active ones! In Photos, toolbars are actual bars, not horizontal areas of floating glassy buttons—which means the system no longer has to attempt to add shading behind those areas in order to improve legibility. They’re just legible.
In Golden Gate, windows generally just feel… a bit more square. Apple has made window corners more consistent, and not having the curved corners of the sidebar right inside the curved corners of the window edge also helps make it feel a little less like you’re under the tyrannical rule of the Circle King.
Compare and contrast macOS Tahoe (top and middle) and macOS Golden Gate (bottom): The Photos toolbar is back, and there’s no longer a distracting fade effect between two different button styles depending on the content scrolling underneath. You can also see the reattached toolbar to the left.
Icons look better across the board in Golden Gate, probably because of a new layered icon compositing approach Apple is taking across its platforms. Unfortunately, apps that dare stick any of their extremities out of the mandated squircle shape are still put in a featureless gray box of shame, which makes it harder to identify icons, especially in appearance modes like Clear and Tinted that remove color as an identifier.
To hear Apple tell it, users are split on the transparency effect of Liquid Glass: some people despise it, and some people can’t get enough of it. As a result, all of Apple’s OS 27 updates introduce a slider—it’s in the Appearances pane of Settings on macOS—that lets you customize the transparency from sort-of-mostly-transparent to sort-of-mostly-opaque. Given that this update rolls back a lot of Apple’s decisions from a year ago, I’m inclined to believe that there really are two camps when it comes to Liquid Glass. Giving users an option to adjust the setting is probably fine, though I’ve currently got the slider right in the center. We’ll see how that goes.
Siri AI takes the Spotlight
Siri has been a part of the Mac experience for a decade now, arriving on the platform five years after it debuted on the iPhone. While I’m sure that many Mac users have embraced it over the years, it has always been an afterthought at best for me. When I’m sitting at my Mac, I’ve got a keyboard and trackpad to get my job done, so I don’t generally feel the need to talk to my computer. And while you’ve been able to type to Siri for a while now… well, the other problem with Siri has always been that Siri’s results are rarely as useful as the results of typing those words into a search engine or some other tool.
In macOS Golden Gate, as with all the other OS 27-era releases, Apple has upgraded Siri to become Siri AI, with LLM-derived features that promise much better results. On top of that, Apple has finally done what it should have done long ago and merged Siri and Spotlight, so there are no longer two separate “type to find things” interfaces on the platform.
The result is… still a work in progress, at least so far. Siri AI is a beta feature inside a beta operating system. Betas within betas. First off, it’s a struggle to remember that Siri is actually useful and I should take advantage of it. Years of training myself never to consider Siri have to be untrained, and that’s going to take some time.
Thus far, I’ve found Siri AI’s responses to general-knowledge queries to be very good. But part of the appeal of Siri AI is its integration with your personal on-device data. This is where things start to fall apart, though this is not surprising—it’s an early beta, and many third-party apps will need to update to better integrate with this system. I don’t use Apple’s default calendar or email apps, which puts me at a disadvantage. It frequently failed to answer fairly basic questions about files on my system—”where’s that PDF that contains my company’s tax ID number?”—that I’d hope that a smart assistant with access to my entire Mac should be able to find.
There’s also the question of Siri/Spotlight choosing the right context. When you type Command-Space, Spotlight comes to the fore—and that’s good, because if you want to use it as an app launcher, you want instant responsiveness. When I typed a question that’s more appropriate for Siri, however, I found I needed to wait a few seconds for “Ask Siri” to appear so I could ask my query.
Ask Siri has been welded onto the top of contextual menus. It feels wrong and seems needy.
There’s a new Ask Siri entry that’s been added to the top of every contextual menu, and while I don’t mind the idea that Siri can act on just about any context you can think of on the Mac, I don’t love how it’s implemented. The contextual menu used to open with all of its contents down and to the right of the pointer (unless you were too far to the right or bottom of the screen); now it starts shifted down a little bit, as if the old context menu was being drawn and then an Ask Siri item was being overlaid right at the top of the menu, sticking up over it. It’s darker than the rest of the menu. If you click on it, it floats forward, the rest of the menu disappears, and you can type in the resulting box. It’s disconcerting every time I right-click on something.
The most useful actions tend to be placed at the top, and I’m not convinced that even a fully functional Ask Siri would always be the most useful command in a context. This feels more like a weird add-on to existing context menus, and all to promote the new Siri features. Apple, if a feature is good, users will use it. Distorting the geography of context menus on the Mac to promote them feels aggressive and almost desperate.
Touchscreen Macs, at last?
One of the most remarkable features of macOS Golden Gate does not really make sense if you take it at face value: Apple has given a major upgrade to Sidecar, the feature introduced in 2019 that allows Macs to use iPads as external Mac displays. As someone who always travels with a 13-inch iPad Pro, that’s a nice feature, though since the 2022 introduction of Universal Control, which lets me use my Mac’s keyboard and mouse on an iPad still running iPadOS, I’ve found very little use for Sidecar.
The big update is that Sidecar, which previously only supported the Apple Pencil, now works with the iPad’s touchscreen. Apple has updated its own apps and supplied third-party apps with the appropriate tools to support full touchscreen support. You can now scroll Mac browser windows with a finger and drag windows around on screen… but only on that iPad you’re using as an extra display.
It’s not hard to read between the lines: As numerous reports have suggested, Apple is planning on releasing its first touch-enabled MacBooks late this year or early next year. Using Sidecar as a way to demo the technology and allow developers to test their apps in advance is really clever.
Beyond that, this feature is delightfully boring. It just does more or less what you’d expect. Adding touch to macOS isn’t going to be revolutionary—it’s been on Windows for ages, and iPads have had optional trackpads and keyboards for six years now. But it’ll be a nice incremental benefit. I still use touch gestures when I’m working on an iPad in laptop configuration, because sometimes it just makes ergonomic sense. If my hands aren’t on the keyboard and I need to scroll something or tap something, a quick poke with my finger does the job. It feels natural—and once you’ve spent some time with that configuration, it’s jarring to use a Mac laptop and realize that you’re poking the screen to no effect.
After a moment’s glee in being able to scroll a Finder window with my finger, using Sidecar with touch to drive the Mac interface just became… normal. Apple has done a good job implementing the feature. Menus drop down reliably. Buttons are tappable. Scrolling works. There’s just not a lot to report, and that’s just fine. It works.
Shortcuts, reduced and enhanced
The Shortcuts app, the cornerstone of Apple’s cross-platform automation technologies, gets a notable upgrade during this cycle. Most of it is probably due to the needs of Describe a Shortcut, a remarkable new feature that lets you input some text and then watch as your device converts it into a Shortcut. As I wrote in June:
This is as close as we’ve come, across 40 years, to the original dream of putting computer power in the hands of everyone. You can literally tell your device what you want it to do, and when—”every morning show me my to-dos and calendar events for the day”—and it will generate a program to do it and a schedule to run it…
But when it works, which is most of the time, it’s magical. And perhaps its best feature is that you can iterate on your Shortcuts. If there’s something it doesn’t do quite right the first time, you can specify changes you’d like to see—”only show me items from my Personal calendar”—and it’ll rewrite the Shortcut to take those changes into account. In that way, it’s emulating the back-and-forth conversations that can make vibe coding so remarkable.
Describe a Shortcut is limited, but it really works quite well. I hope it continues to grow and improve, because it lowers the bar for user automation across Apple’s platforms in a delightful way.
Shortcuts will analyze and describe any of your shortcuts, but that right pane needs to be hideable.
For those of us still building Shortcuts with our own fingers like animals, some of the other improvements will help that work get done. There’s a new Otherwise If statement that can be added to If-Else blocks (you get to it by control-clicking on the Else block and then choosing Add “Otherwise If”), making the structuring of branching shortcuts logic much, much simpler.
There’s also support for persistent data storage, which is kind of huge. You can save data, which syncs via iCloud and is accessible across your devices, and Shortcuts can both access it and update it! That will make Shortcuts capable of behaving more like other apps, all without having to rig up other ways of storing data in iCloud Drive or elsewhere. (Yes, this canonizes Simon Støvring’s Data Jar in Apple’s OS, and that’s a good thing.)
The arrival of Describe a Shortcut has unfortunately distorted the Shortcuts interface in some unfortunate ways. On the Mac, there’s a new three-paned interface, where the third pane is a giant preview of a shortcut’s color, icon, and (this is fun) an AI-generated summary of what the shortcut does. The pane exists because of the text box at the bottom, which lets you type input to Describe a Shortcut to make changes to whatever shortcut you’ve got selected. Which is fine, except it’s an enormous amount of screen space devoted to something that may be entirely irrelevant. Somehow, Shortcuts won’t let you hide this pane.
Apple has finally updated its Shared Albums feature, which had been compromised since it launched because it didn’t offer the ability to share full-resolution images. Over the years, Apple added other methods of sharing groups of photos via iCloud, and those could include full-resolution images, but this one prominent feature felt stuck in the past.
Now it’s getting a proper upgrade, with support for full-resolution images and allowing for full collaboration with people on other platforms so that everyone can contribute to a shared photo album. I’m relieved that I will soon have to stop explaining the differences among the various ways to share items in Photos and warning people away from Shared Albums.
As for the three AI-powered features in Photos, they’re a mixed bag. I have high hopes for a much improved Clean Up, which was already okay but could be a lot better. The new version is much more adept at artfully clipping unwanted items out of an image and filling those areas with in-context imagery, though of course it’s not perfect.
The other two features, Extend and Spatial Reframe, require the use of an advanced diffusion model that’s only available via Private Cloud Compute, and as a result, they take time to execute, since Photos will need to upload your photo, wait for a result, and then download the result.
Extend added people, scaffolding, and trees to this shot. (Original frame inverted for reference.)
Extend feels like a good feature, since there are plenty of scenarios where your image needs just a little more headroom or width. It’s also going to be great for straightening images, since Extend can fill in the slivers of unknown image that are exposed when you rotate, which otherwise require that your image be cropped as you rotate.
However, every pixel you expand the selection increases the jeopardy that what’s going to be generated is weird or fake. Everyone’s mileage may vary, but I found that I was much more comfortable expanding a photo a little bit to gain some headroom than doing it a lot, forcing the AI system to invent more objects or scenes. I was occasionally frustrated that I couldn’t slightly extend the bottom of some images, where subjects’ legs or feet were cut off. Also, you have to be aware of incredible fabrications—extending a graduation photo added a gigantic floating tassel and an invented piece of furniture, and extending a stadium shot added a roof where there isn’t one. Judicious use, carefully analyzed, is my advice.
Then there’s Spatial Reframe, which brings together a load of existing Apple technologies, including the spatial scanning algorithm it used to create spatial photos on Vision Pro. This feature works by scanning your photo locally using that algorithm, inferring a depth map that is then used to build a 3-D version of the image that you can pivot a bit, up and down, and left and right. This is the effect that allows you, on the Vision Pro, to feel like you can move your head and see parallaxes shifting, even though, if you look closely, the exposed content behind a subject is just a simple generative fill. It all happens so quickly, and in service of a live 3-D effect, that it’s often not noticeable, and even when it is, it’s not that big a deal.
The bar is a lot higher for a fixed, 2-D photo at full resolution. So after you use Spatial Reframe to slightly move the perspective of a shot, all the data is sent up to Private Cloud Compute, where a new version of your shot is rendered—including much more advanced generation of all of those pixels that are revealed by parallax or at the edges of the frame.
Some results are more synthetic than others. Unlike Extend, Spatial Reframe changes the entire perspective of the picture, which requires everything visible to be re-rendered at full quality. The result sometimes feels artificial. Again, my first impression is for people to use this feature with care and caution.
There are a handful of other nice, new Photos features, including new Captured By Me and Identity Documents sections (quick, find that photo of my passport!), and a triumphant return of star ratings for individual photos.
Wait, there’s more…
There are so many small enhancements in Golden Gate that it’s hard to mention them all, and every time I turn around, I keep bumping into more of them. Keeping in mind that we’re entering the long cruise to the fall release of the final version, here are some other highlights so far:
Apple has added some light menu-bar management, specifically to deal with items that overflow the notch on some MacBook models. I’m glad that it’s taken this tentative step, though I wish it were more—it’s okay, Apple, you can sherlock all those menu-bar-management utilities out there1—and of course, it should’ve happened back when the notch first appeared (checks notes) nearly five years ago. Better late than never, I guess.
Safari’s now got an AI-driven tab organizer, so if you’re someone who keeps a zillion tabs open, you can have Safari group them into smaller, more navigable clusters. I’m not a zillion-tabs person, but I noticed that this approach is also being applied to the Start Page, where recently viewed pages also now appear clustered by topic.
The Passwords app gets an injection of agentic AI through a new feature that offers to change your compromised or easy-to-guess passwords for you, navigating various websites and generating new, high-security passwords automatically. It’s a clever idea, but the most unfinished of any feature in the beta. It managed to change three of the 39 passwords it attempted. If you were trying to break into my Ikea account, well, you’re going to need to order more Kallax shelves on someone else’s dime now.
Both Finder and the document save option in the menu bar will scan the contents of a file and offer up naming suggestions. I didn’t love the suggestions it offered, but your mileage may vary. I’d like to see this feature applied to auto-generated filenames like screenshots, though!
A file name suggestion based on the file’s content.
A note about stability
This summer, the vibe has been that Apple’s 27 releases are very stable for betas, which is not surprising since improved stability and reliability have been key Apple goals. And I would agree, I’ve been running the developer beta on my main Mac since the week after WWDC, and it’s been mostly fine.
But don’t be fooled: These are betas, and they will do weird stuff. I have to occasionally reboot my Mac to get things working normally. Shortcuts just stop working, and then start working again, willy-nilly. Third-party apps frequently quit unexpectedly, or refuse to quit at all and hang out in my Dock forever! And as I mentioned above, my menu bar manager is busted, though the developers are working on it.
If you’re willing to put up with the quirks in exchange for a glimpse at the future of the Mac, jump in. If you refused Tahoe entirely, you are in for an extra treat. And if you’d rather just wait… relax. Fall will be here before you know it.
It’s worth noting that Apple’s changes to the menu bar seem to have broken compatibility with existing menu bar utilities. They’ll need to be updated. If you rely on them and want to jump into the Public Beta, be warned. ↩
Apple’s pattern of updates is often described as two beats, maybe like the lub-dub sound of your heart: a year of big changes, followed by a year of tweaks that feature just a couple of marquee improvements.1 The 27 series of operating systems marks a big dub year, but there’s a backbeat to the rhythm, too, as Apple retreats from what most of us believe were overreaches in the interface department.
Liquid Glass was not beloved. I didn’t mind it so much on the Mac, and I found some iPhone and iPad improvements worthwhile, and the rest tolerable. Some people hated it. John Gruber notably decided to hold off on updating his primary Mac to Tahoe. Apple ironically highlighted a slider in its WWDC keynote that one could describe as “mostly forget about Liquid Glass,” with an option from “full-on, nobody wanted this” to “as close to zero as we can go without breaking the interface.” Good.
No (Tahoe, button, left). Yes (Golden Gate, slider, right).
Stacey Ford, Apple’s Vice President of OS Program Management, called out a broad mandate in the keynote. “We scoured every part of the OS for opportunities to refine our systems from the UI to the foundations,” she said. “Nothing was off limits, no enhancement too small.” In other words, there are no sacred cows leftover from the design team that left, and maybe Ford and her group hate the same things that we do, and they’ve been given the authority to fix them.
Maybe as a consequence, Liquid Glass will improve legibility through several changes, which you’ll see even with the slider set to zero. The layers of Liquid Glass elements will now be rendered so that the diffusion of the underlying material won’t interfere as much with legibility. When content moves beneath a floating bar, the bar will now—shocking!—float on top and increase contrast to keep its contents comprehensible, too. Edges will now be darker, and icons sharper.
Gruber despised a secondary macOS change perhaps as much as Liquid Glass: the tiny icons on drop-down menus that were unhelpful, patronizing, and inconsistent across apps. Those are effectively gone now, with new guidance from Apple that is nearly contemptuous of the one-year glitch in the approach.
No (left, Tahoe). Yes (right, Golden Gate).
A lot of digital ink was also spilled about corner radii, dragging, and consistency with macOS 26. So much so that Apple’s Shubham Kedia—Director, Human Interface—said in the keynote this remarkable phrase: “…every window on macOS now has the same tighter corner radius ensuring greater consistency across all of your apps, even if they haven’t been updated.” It’s the weirdest time in the company’s history that an Apple leader had to utter those words, but there you go, and there was mostly rejoicing. The lower-right-corner drag area appears fixed, too, in my testing with the first beta.
Yes (rounded corners that have consistent radii in Golden Gate). (Source: Apple)
Tahoe’s other missteps that will be drawn back to the norm include ending the weirdly inset sidebars, such as in Photos, which now extend to the edges; the mouse-over hand cursor has mostly reverted to pre-Tahoe format, with slightly different finger positions, and indications that it’s a Mickey Mouse-style glove; and even the default wallpaper has rolled backwards, with iOS, iPadOS, and macOS all having access to the same set, if that’s the kind of thing you like.
No (Tahoe, inset sidebar in Photos).Yes (Golden Gate, flush sidebar in Photos).
More generally, I heard grumblings and read long essays about the instability people experienced with Tahoe, and still do, even though we’re at version 26.5. Often, the “tweak” year involves thousands of under-the-hood fixes. Apple was more frank about making things better this year than it has been since, I want to say, the year after Yosemite.2 It would be like Microsoft making fun of blue screens of death.
Apple’s Ford said, “We made things faster, smoother, even easier to use, and we took care of a bunch of things you’ve been asking about.” She later described speed improvements in iOS and iPadOS app launch times, a fix for a long-running Wi-Fi/cellular poor handoff issue, a complete overhaul of Spotlight, and much more. She noted, “We’ve all had that moment where you search for something you know is there, but it just won’t show up. So on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, we’ve rebuilt the foundation of search that powers Spotlight, Photos, and Mail.” That is a heck of an admission of the truth we experience day to day—almost un-Apple-like.
There’s more I won’t enumerate in detail, such as the “OS improvements” section that appears on Apple’s sites for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, in which Apple confesses to imperfections and proclaims it has solved them. Because all iPhones, most iPads,3 a few Apple Watches,4 and all M-series Macs (but no Intel Macs) that could run version 26 can run 27, no harm, no foul, right? Just took a year.
These rollbacks and improvements may finally push people like Gruber to, er, cross the Golden Gate in a way that they could never bring themselves to plunge into the imperfect, quirky, and irritating waters of Tahoe. Because of how Apple pushes users to upgrade, I expect that iPhone and iPad users may find more relief, as they’re running the current release!
For further reading (and writing)
My summer’s work will include a lot of reading to write updates for around 10 Take Control Books titles. I’ll also be working to keep a new micro-site, currently called Apple Specs, up to date, where you can look up operating system and hardware features to figure out which devices and releases support them. I welcome feedback via a link on each page of the site.
This year, those are Siri AI, Apple Intelligence integration more generally—and maybe child-related safety and app-usage tools? ↩
The 8th-generation iPad was introduced in 2020, so it’s a bit long in the tooth by some standards. However, I’d like to understand why it could run iPadOS 26 and not 27. For a complete list of iPad compatibility, see Apple’s iPadOS 27 preview page. ↩
Discussed in many forums, this is the biggest blow. watchOS 27 supports only Series 9 and later, SE 3 and later, and Ultra 2 and later. This feels like a big mistake, particularly if Apple winds up with any requirements for having the 27 releases on all devices on an Apple Account, as it has for certain feature rollouts in the pass, usually for security. ↩
The public beta of macOS 27 Golden Gate is out today, and I’m sure many of you are wondering whether to take the plunge and give it a try in advance of its official fall release. That’s the question this preview is here to help answer. It’s not my final take on Golden Gate by any means; after all, I’ve only been using it for about a month, and there will be several more turns in the beta cycle between now and the public release. However, I’ve used Golden Gate long enough to help you make an informed decision about whether or not to install the public beta now.
Of course, it’s impossible for me to account for everyone’s unique Mac setups when considering Golden Gate’s stability, but it’s worth reiterating what I’ve said in past previews: modern Apple betas have been consistently stable. That’s to say, the risks of using the public beta are modest. It’s been years since I’ve had a critical app fail or lost data. I never go into beta season without a backup plan, though. If something goes terribly wrong, I have backups, backups of those backups, and alternate Macs I can switch to in the event of a disaster. I don’t expect to have to go to Plan B, but if you’re going to jump on the Beta Bus, you should have a Plan B, too.
Okay, you’ve been warned. Let’s get to the fun part.
Every year’s macOS update is a little different, but Golden Gate is more different than most. Instead of focusing on tentpole features and apps (with the exception of a new Siri app), macOS 27’s updates fall into three broad categories:
refinements to Apple’s Liquid Glass design language,
hundreds of system-level changes intended to improve your Mac’s performance, and
Apple Intelligence, which includes the new Siri app as well as many other AI additions to existing system apps.
It’s been a while since the “Snow Leopard Moment.”
With so many past macOS updates focusing on system apps, it’s refreshing to see Apple take a more holistic system-level approach, which harkens back to how most people remember OS X Snow Leopard. In fact, during WWDC briefings, Apple representatives likened the Golden Gate update to Snow Leopard before anyone in the room even asked about it.
Source: Apple.
Snow Leopard is remembered as a release that focused on performance over features. The reality is that the update also introduced its fair share of new features, but many were less splashy from a user-facing standpoint. They were under-the-hood updates that made the Mac work better without users having to think about it much. In that sense, Golden Gate has a lot in common with Snow Leopard. Other than the brand new Siri app, you probably won’t notice that much is different when you first launch the new version. But over time, the changes will reveal themselves, adding up to a whole that – with few exceptions – is greater than the parts.
So let’s take a closer look at how Liquid Glass has evolved, the most significant system changes, and what it’s like to use Siri and other Apple Intelligence updates in Golden Gate’s public beta.
Design
Windows stand out from each other more, and the sidebar runs edge to edge in Golden Gate.
Last year’s introduction of the Liquid Glass design language was divisive. I rather like it, and others don’t, but I expect the overwhelming majority of Mac users don’t have a strong opinion either way.
That said, I came away from macOS Tahoe feeling like its Liquid Glass implementation was unfinished, or at least unevenly applied, because it varied from app to app and even within apps. Examples included different transparency treatments within apps like Finder:
I use [Finder] with the tab bar visible most of the time, whether I’m using tabs or not. I also almost always use a list view in Finder. What I discovered when I turned off the tab bar and switched to an icon grid view was that the Finder toolbar and buttons became far more transparent. Dark file icons are more noticeable beneath the toolbar, and text becomes more of a distraction.
That sort of inconsistency has been fixed.
Finder in macOS Tahoe.
Finder in macOS Golden Gate. Even with Liquid Glass’ transparency turned on as far as it can go, toolbar buttons are more visible now.
Another big inconsistency was how toolbars were handled from app to app. In some apps, like Photos, they were very transparent, making buttons difficult to see against picture thumbnails in some cases. Other apps, like Reminders, used a more frosted treatment that prevented text and icons under toolbars from competing with the toolbar’s icons and text as a user scrolled their task lists. That, too, has changed for the better.
But perhaps the single biggest change to Liquid Glass is a new slider in the Appearance section of System Settings that lets you dial in the intensity of the transparency. By default, the slider is set directly in the middle. Moving the slider to the left makes buttons and other elements more transparent, while moving it to the right reduces transparency in favor of a frosted look.
Behold, the transparency slider.
The slider is a welcome change that lets users decide how transparent UI elements are. It’s the right choice when some people love Liquid Glass, some can’t stand it, and most don’t care. The default setting works well for those who don’t care and will never think to look for the transparency slider, while those who do care can dial in the look they prefer. Me? I’m a full transparency guy, at least for now, so you’ll see a lot of that here and in my fall review.
Window sidebars have been changed in a big way, too. In Tahoe, they resembled a glass sheet sitting on top of the window. I liked the look, but if you had overlapping windows, it was sometimes possible to mistake a sidebar for a separate window, which could be confusing. With Golden Gate, sidebars extend to the edges of their windows so they look as though they’re built into the windows instead of sitting on top of them.
Apple also reversed course on another controversial Tahoe change: icons next to menu items. I use keyboard shortcuts so much that I barely noticed the icons next to every single menu item. Now, however, they’re once again used sparingly.
The evolution of the Dictionary icon.
Mac app icons have been tweaked as well. Tahoe saw icons confined to the borders of a squircle, which is still a hotly debated topic. That hasn’t changed in Golden Gate. Instead, the glass effect that subtly distorted icon images has been dialed back, resulting in crisper looking icons.
There are other design changes, like deeper shadows to help distinguish windows from each other and more uniformly shaped window corners, that I’ll cover in the fall, but my early impressions of the changes have been positive. Everything feels more considered and consistent. Rather than feeling unfinished as it did in Tahoe, Liquid Glass now feels properly embedded into the fabric of the Mac.
System Changes
Nowhere is the Snow Leopard of it all more apparent than in the hundreds of little changes made to improve the day-to-day use of your Mac. I’m not going to catalog them all here, but I’ve used Golden Gate on two different Macs at this point, and based on my experiences so far, the changes are meaningful.
I installed Golden Gate on a MacBook Pro that I have on loan from Apple as soon as I got back from WWDC in early June. That laptop has an M4 Max chip and 128GB of memory, so it was already fast. But even on that Mac, I noticed differences when I installed Golden Gate.
Spotlight is very fast, even on my M1 Max Mac Studio used for this animation.
Most apps launch faster, with fewer Dock bounces, which I appreciate, but the most noticeable performance improvement has been to Spotlight. I liked what Apple did with Spotlight in Tahoe a lot, but its responsiveness has been inconsistent. As a result, I switched back to Raycast not long before WWDC for launching apps, running shortcuts, and initiating other actions.
When I installed Golden Gate, I switched back to using Spotlight and was blown away by the difference. Of course, it remains to be seen whether the speed-up sticks long-term, but the early results have been impressive. Finding apps, files, folders, shortcuts, and clipboard items is lightning fast. Searching in Photos and Mail, which each got their own search tune-up, is very fast, too.
Search in Mail has been improved, too.
Plus, even though the MacBook Pro I’ve been using to test Golden Gate is already fast, it’s worth noting that I have roughly 3TB of data stored on it. That includes tens of thousands of photos, email messages, and texts, so even given the laptop’s speed, Spotlight’s performance is still impressive.
What’s been most impressive, though, is the difference Golden Gate has made to my M1 Max Mac Studio. It has a similar number of files and half the memory. Just before updating it to Golden Gate about a week ago, I was feeling the pain of Spotlight slowdowns. I was running macOS 26.5, and searching for an app in Spotlight often pulled up the iPhone version before the one installed on my Mac. Perhaps that’s related to the fact that my iPhone is running the iOS 27 beta, but even Mac-only apps would sometimes take five or six seconds to show up at the top of the list in Spotlight when I searched for them.
That’s completely changed with Golden Gate. I’ve used macOS 27 on my Mac Studio for a shorter period than the MacBook Pro, but the difference in speed has been a real eye-opener, making Spotlight searches nearly instant. It’s also worth noting that the initial indexing of my 3TB of data only took about a half of a work day to complete on the Mac Studio, which was faster than I expected, having watched my iPhone 17 Pro Max take days to index.
Sending a 47MB EPUB file from one Mac running Golden Gate to another.
Also worth noting is that AirDrop is much, much faster now, too. I move images and other files between my iPhone, iPad, and Macs with AirDrop dozens of times each week. It’s a deeply embedded part of my workflow. Before installing Golden Gate, I rarely sent multiple items via AirDrop simultaneously because it could be very slow or even fail completely. Now, however, I’m retraining myself to send multiple screenshots and other files all at once because AirDrop is so much faster than before.
Launching apps and sending screenshots more quickly aren’t sexy new features that come with fancy screenshots I can share with you, but these are meaningful changes just the same. It remains to be seen how the improvements will hold up over time, but they’ve made a great first impression, so I’m optimistic. Changes that reduce friction are the kind of updates that help keep me focused on what I’m doing and get more done, which I consider a big win.
Those are the big-ticket system changes to the Mac, but of course, there are many other system-level changes coming, like better window positioning consistency when you use multiple displays, HDR UI elements and faster refresh rates for displays that support those features, resizable windows in the iPhone Mirroring app, full-resolution images in Shared Albums in Photos, and enhancements to Notes, Maps, Podcasts, and Messages. I’ll have more details on all of them in my fall review.
Apple Intelligence and the Siri App
The new Siri app.
The headline Apple Intelligence feature this year is the new Siri app, a dedicated chatbot-style interface that benefits from Apple’s AI collaboration with Google. Before I get into Siri, though, it’s worth noting that there’s more to Apple’s AI story this year than just the digital assistant. In fact, Apple Intelligence features have been sprinkled throughout the system:
Finder uses AI to suggest file and folder names based on their content;
Safari tabs can be automatically organized by topic;
Weak passwords can be automatically updated in the Passwords app;
Messages spawns little buttons that let you pull information out of a chat and into apps like Reminders and Calendar;
Natural language descriptions can be used to create Calendar events; and
Photos includes new AI-driven features like Spatial Reframing, Extend for expanding the borders of a photo, and improvements to the Clean Up tool.
Building shortcuts with natural language.
Shortcuts has joined the fray, too, with the ability to build shortcuts simply by describing them. This is the sort of democratization of automation that I love. Building shortcuts has always been simpler than writing code, but it’s also had a steeper learning curve than most people were willing to deal with. You won’t be able to build a complex shortcut with natural language alone, but the reality is that even people who know how to make complex shortcuts use a lot of simple ones for day-to-day tasks, and for that, the new feature is fantastic.
I’m also a fan of the ability to build Safari extensions by describing them. I’ve made a couple, like one that generates a Markdown-formatted link list from selected tabs, and the process of building it was fast and effective.
I’ll have more to say about all of these features in the fall, but they’ve made good first impressions. In past macOS updates, some of the Apple Intelligence features have felt a little out of place and bolted on. I appreciate that these new features are woven more cleanly into their underlying apps. Maybe the era of self-consciously calling every feature AI is coming to an end and they’ll just be called features again. We’re probably not quite there yet, but one can hope.
Using Siri AI from inside Spotlight.
As for Siri AI, which is surfaced in the new Siri app, Spotlight, context menus, and other locations, it’s worth keeping in mind that Apple has said it will launch later this year as a beta. The Siri AI features are also gated behind a waiting list, so don’t install the beta expecting to be able to use them right away, and even if you do get it, Siri AI is a beta of a beta.
As a result, Siri AI has more rough edges than other parts of Golden Gate. For example, it’s not uncommon for Siri requests to simply fail on one Mac but be correctly answered on another.
Other parts of Siri AI don’t work at all, like third-party app integrations since developers have to update their apps first. I can add tasks in Reminders, events in Calendar, and notes in Notes, but I haven’t had the chance to try a third-party Mac app that works with Siri AI yet. If you’re a developer working on Siri AI support, get in touch. I’ll be highlighting the best ones I try in the fall.
Siri is excellent for finding old texts in Messages, adding tasks to Reminders, and more.
Despite the current limitations, if you use chatbots as a replacement for Google Search, you’ll probably have a good experience with the new Siri app. That’s because even in these early betas, if you ask Siri something like, “Give me a day trip itinerary for a trip to Chicago this Saturday,” you’re likely to get good but pretty middle-of-the-road recommendations. From there, though, you can drill down with follow-up queries to get something more in line with your tastes. The results include source links you can follow, too. Given the ad-strewn mess that web search has become, using Siri for this sort of thing is a meaningfully better experience.
The one caveat on Siri’s world knowledge is that it’s roughly 2-3 weeks stale in some places. Ask Siri to give you the most recent article on any website, and it will be 2-3 weeks old. However, fetching current information instead of specific posts is more timely. When I asked whether Anthropic had made any announcements recently about Cowork, Siri correctly linked me to stories from two days prior.
Current events and sports show up quickly in Siri, but that’s not true for all web-based queries.
Likewise, facts like sports scores and celebrity deaths seem to get updated more quickly. I’m writing this on July 9, and I saw a headline in Apple News this morning that singer Bonnie Tyler passed away yesterday. I asked Siri if she was still alive and was told that she was “as of June.” I asked again a couple of hours later, and Siri answered that her death was announced on July 9 – the same day I asked.
Siri is also good at completing one or more actions as long as they fit within the defined set of App Intents schemas. “Remind me to walk the dog at 5:00 pm, add dinner with Jennifer at Mandalino’s to my calendar for Friday at 7:00 pm, and create a note that says ‘Hello World’” works reliably. In my early testing, Siri is also good at generating images comparable to what you’d get directly from Image Playground, creating and summarizing text, playing media like a requested podcast episode, and maintaining continuity when follow-up questions are asked.
Sometimes, Siri just takes a random stab at an answer.
Personal context generally works well, too. Siri can find old iMessages I’ve sent to people, it knows who my wife is and where I live, and it can find all sorts of information buried in Notes and other apps where Apple has done the work to expose that information. But like all AI systems, it sometimes makes things up. I asked Siri how old Federico is, and it looked at his entry in Contacts, which includes his birthday. The trouble is, I only included the month and day of Federico’s birthday, not the year, so Siri “guessed” that he’s 116 years old, which is off by a little. Siri also equates Reminders tasks that are assigned a time with Calendar events, which is odd.
When you dig deeper into Siri AI, you’ll discover that not all structured data on your Mac has been given the necessary makeover to work with it. A good example is Music. You can prompt Siri to play a song, but most of the rich metadata in the app isn’t exposed to Siri, which is a shame because it is exposed elsewhere, for example to AppleScript. Again, though, this is a beta, and there’s clearly more work to be done to take better advantage of what’s on your Mac.
Apps like Music don’t expose as much of their data to Siri AI as they do to AppleScript, which is frustrating.
Despite the limitations and rough edges, I expect that the new Siri app will be a hit. I’ve found Siri’s world knowledge answers to be a little superficial – similar to what Google’s AI Overviews produce. However, in-depth research isn’t the point, nor is it what people want or need most of the time. For information about current events, businesses, and other everyday questions, Siri is fine. Throw in the ability to manage tasks, calendar events, notes, and the other things people commonly do on their Macs and other devices, and it adds up to a greatly improved Siri experience.
Overall, Golden Gate is shaping up to be an excellent release. As for whether you should give it a try, I think it’s worth it, especially if you have an older Apple silicon Mac that would benefit from the performance gains. I also think many people will get a lot out of most of the Apple Intelligence features right away. Plus, if you primarily use an app like ChatGPT or Claude to search for information and like the idea of occasionally dropping information into apps like Calendar and Reminders, you’ll get a lot out of Siri, too.
And of course, even if you want more out of Siri than it offers today, patience is in order. I set my expectations for Siri low after Tahoe, and while I would have preferred more from this beta release, I’m willing to wait it out a little. I’m optimistic that it will improve because if Apple is able to assemble a tool that can perform multiple actions across its own apps and those from third parties, users will have an elegant, simple, privacy-focused solution that will go a long way towards fulfilling what was demoed at WWDC in 2024. And that’s something worth waiting for.
Apple Intelligence and Siri AI have sucked most of the oxygen out of the room at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference this year—understandable, maybe, given that the AI-powered Siri delays are all anyone has wanted to ask any Apple executive about for the last two years.
But Apple Intelligence is just one of the three big focus areas Apple outlined during its keynote this week. The second is new parental controls—overdue, but promising-looking, as the parent of a 6-year-old with an iPad that I only begrudgingly connect to the Internet. And the third is "platform improvements," a catch-all for a wide range of fit-and-finish changes aimed at boosting responsiveness and addressing common user complaints.
I have the first beta of macOS 27 Golden Gate running on an M1 MacBook Air—the oldest, slowest hardware Apple supports now that Intel compatibility is out the window. With some help from Apple's densely packed wall-of-features slide, here are a few things from the "platform improvements" column I like the most, plus one item I'd still like to see.
As Apple announced last year, this year's macOS release will end support for Intel Macs. The macOS 27 Golden Gate release will require a Mac with an Apple Silicon chip inside, including the original M1 that launched in the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini back in late 2020.
Intel Macs running macOS 26 Tahoe can expect security and Safari patches for about two more years after the release of macOS 27 Golden Gate. Macs running macOS 15 Sequoia will receive one more year of updates. Apple Silicon Macs will still be able to run Intel Mac apps via the Rosetta 2 compatibility layer in macOS 27, but future releases will begin to limit the technology (Apple has said it will mainly be used to support older games that still use Intel code).
This change has been a long time coming, and every new macOS release has left a longer and longer list of Intel Macs behind. But many Mac owners who purchased late-model Intel machines in 2019 and 2020 could still run the latest version of the operating system, and third-party utilities like the OpenCore Legacy Patcher helped more adventurous Mac owners use their unsupported hardware a bit longer.
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