MacOS 27 Golden Gate: Top New Features

Apple's latest version of its Mac operating system officially rolled out on September 14. MacOS 27 Golden Gate was announced at WWDC in June, but it's now available to download right on your Mac—assuming you have a compatible one. The launch of Siri AI is the huge new feature, which is Apple's first serious attempt to integrate AI capabilities deeply into macOS. I've been playing around with the software update for months, and now it's available for anyone to try out. Updated September 2026: Added some hands-on impressions now that macOS 27 is officially out in the world. Is Your Mac Compatible With macOS Golden Gate? The new update, macOS 27 Golden Gate, is only compatible with Apple Silicon Macs. Last year, Apple announced that macOS 26 Tahoe would be the last update to support Intel-powered Macs. Here's the full list of supported devices: - MacBook Neo (2026) - MacBook Pro (2020 and later) - MacBook Air (2020 and later) - Mac mini (2020 and later) - iMac (2021 and later) - Mac Studio (2022 and later) - Mac Pro (2023 and later) Some of the more advanced Apple Intelligence features, such as the improved Voice Mode, are exclusive to newer Macs. Those more advanced modes require an M3 Mac or newer with at least 12 GB of RAM. That rules out the MacBook Neo and lots of MacBook Airs from before 2024. One more caveat: Siri AI is currently English-only and will not be immediately available in the EU or China due to regulatory concerns. How to Install macOS 27 Golden Gate The MacOS Golden Gate beta has been available since July, but the official release is now available to download and safe to install on your Mac if you want to try out the new features. Like always, just head over to System Settings > General > Software Update. From there, you should see macOS Golden Gate 27 available, with the option to Update Now or Update Tonight. Meet the New Siri Siri on Mac never made a lot of sense, and I can't imagine it has ever been used much. But this new version of the chatbot, known as Siri AI, looks a bit more tailored for this new version of macOS Golden Gate. It carries over a lot of the new features that the iOS and iPadOS versions have, including a dedicated app, screen awareness, automatic proofreading, personal context, and the improved, customizable voice experience. Most importantly, the new Apple Foundation Models that Siri runs on are based on Google Gemini, giving it highly improved natural language processing as well as the latest computer vision and image-generation models. I could see a lot of Mac users, especially those who are weary (or afraid) of going to ChatGPT.com, getting their first real exposure to modern AI chatbots through Siri AI. Unfortunately, it’s currently still in Beta. It’s turned off by default, and in Settings, it states that Siri AI is “being rolled out gradually.” That's a shame considering how long we've been waiting for it, but Apple clearly wants to release this to the wider public as carefully as possible. Reports online indicate that some people were clearing the waitlist early on within minutes. I was not that lucky, however, and have been waiting for almost an entire day at the time of writing. Apple hasn't indicated how extensive the waitlist is or how long it will take to come out of beta. Once you do have access, though, Siri should now be systemwide. It can be pulled up from anywhere on the desktop, where it’s accessible from a simple right click in the context window. One example of how this might work is with documents. In Finder, you can select a few files and then right click, then click on Siri AI to start prompting right in the Siri AI app. It's also being built into Spotlight. Right now, Spotlight is primarily just for finding things on your computer. But now Apple says that if you ask it a question that's more suited for Siri, it'll automatically answer using Siri AI and open a chat window so you can continue the Siri conversation. Siri also has Visual Intelligence on the Mac. If you take a screenshot, Siri can be immediately pulled up and prompted to answer questions about or take action on what’s in that image. For more information on how Siri AI works across other platforms, check out our full breakdown of everything you can do with the new app. Apple Intelligence Apps The broader rollout of this new version of Siri is also happening across a variety of first-party Apple apps. Safari is getting the biggest update. It's had tab groups since 2021, but browser tabs have always had to be organized and managed manually. Now, there's something called Topics in Safari, which feels like a smarter way to organize tabs. Using AI, Safari will automatically combine tabs together into topics, which can then be closed out or saved for later as a tab group. One of the most interesting new features is Custom Extensions, which lets you create an extension for Safari in natural language. Just click on the menu button in the address bar, and you'll find the “Describe Extension…” item. This sounds neat in theory, though I struggled to think of any use cases that would actually be valuable. I've also been using a Notify Me feature, which is a simple way to be notified when certain webpages are updated. I've been using it to track pricing on a few important products I've always got my eye on, and it works quite nicely, appearing as a notification badge on your desktop. I know there are lots of ways to do this already, but having it built natively into your browser and Mac notifications is handy. Lastly, the new version of Safari also uses the Passwords app to automatically fix website login passwords that are deemed no longer safe to use. The other interesting implementation of Apple Intelligence is within the Shortcuts app. The app received some artificial intelligence upgrades last year, but this new update takes things much further. You can now use natural language to design an automated shortcut, no longer requiring the manual work of connecting functions within apps together. Apple's example was that you could type, “Whenever I'm leaving work, calculate the ETA, and send it to Pedro," which would use a combination of Maps and Messages. Other updates include using natural language when creating an event in Calendar, which will then fill in the details with contacts or locations. Image Playground also received a major update, which is now based on Google's Gemini image-generation tech. It can now cook up photorealistic imagery and looks far less limited in what it can do. You can finally do landscape or portrait aspect ratio, as well as iteratively edit your AI creations. I think this will still be a fairly niche app, though, and the photorealistic stuff still has a fakey look compared to the latest models from ChatGPT or Gemini. Like other image-generation apps, Image Playground will be subject to daily limits, but paid iCloud+ subscriptions can buy you more image generation. Tweaks to Liquid Glass While AI is the focus of the update, Golden Gate is also a follow-up to last year's macOS Tahoe. Liquid Glass represented a major change to the way all the user interface elements of the appear, and in macOS Golden Gate, those UI elements are being refined. Answering complaints about indecipherability and messy menus, macOS now has a refraction effect in its transparency, which more strongly obscures background content and makes the text in the foreground easier to read. Upon installing macOS Golden Gate, you now get a Liquid Glass slider right off the bat. I played around with different degrees of transparency, but found my preference to be around the 75 percent mark. This still gives the effect without being distracting or messy. This can be customized in System Settings > Appearance, letting you fine-tune the effect to what you prefer. If you really want turn it off entirely, though, you can still use Accessibility > Display > Reduce Transparency setting, which almost entirely turns off the effect in areas like the Menu Bar and Dock. Apple has also made some smaller refinements to the visual identity of macOS. The Tool bar now has a uniform menu, the sidebars expand to the very edge of the window and the icons within the sidebars have color once again. Apple also promised that every window would finally have the same corner radius to the window control buttons, but I still found some places where they didn't match, such as in the Safari settings window. Also, many third-party apps haven't updated, so, for example, Google Chrome doesn't match Safari. Beyond the visual elements, Apple says it has made improvements to responsiveness, such as memory usage, CPU usage, display rendering, and app switching. One example on the Mac was that moving between Spaces was more fluid, as is opening Mission Control. Better HDR and External Monitor Support These weren't features that were talked about at WWDC, but there are two interesting updates in macOS 27 with regard to display technology. The first is systemwide use of an XDR panel. Apple has been ahead of the game on HDR support in its MacBook Pro displays and Studio Display XDR monitors, but the extra brightness is only visible in HDR content such as movies, videos, or games. The rest of the time, it's a completely unused feature. But now, macOS will actually use that HDR capability systemwide in certain UI elements. It's very subtle, but you'll see a bit more brightness in the highlights of Liquid Glass-enhanced icons and buttons, giving them a bit more pop from the rest of your screen. It's not going to blow your pants off, but I always like to see more use of these super-bright HDR screens in smart ways. Secondly, Apple's official review documentation indicates that macOS now has updated external monitor support. It states that with macOS 27, the system now supports “additional high-resolution and high-refresh-rate display modes for external displays," for the purpose of providing “more options to match your monitor's full capabilities.” I've asked Apple for more detail about what exactly that means. As of now, Macs don't officially support monitors with over 240 Hz, so expanding support to 360 Hz or even 480 Hz, especially for gaming, could be in the cards. I will update this section when I know more. [Image text:] 69 10 etv AO