macOS 27 Golden Gate runs on all currently shipping Macs, as well as most models introduced within the past five years or so. Sadly, macOS 27 does drop support for some Mac models that were able to run macOS 26 Tahoe.

Model support

macOS 27 supports all and only Macs with Apple silicon. The full list of supported models is:

• MacBook Neo
• MacBook Air (Apple silicon, 2020 or newer)
• MacBook Pro (Apple silicon, 2020 or newer)
• iMac (2021 or newer)
• Mac mini (2020 or newer)
• Mac Studio
• Mac Pro (2023)

Unfortunately, that excludes the last Intel-based models that were able to run Tahoe but can now go no further: iMac (2020), MacBook Air (Retina, 13-inch, 2020), MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019; 13-inch, 2020), and Mac Pro (2019).

To confirm which Mac model you have, choose Apple menu > About This Mac. The panel looks different in Monterey or earlier.

If your Mac doesn’t have an Apple M-series or A-series processor, I’m very sorry to say it won’t run macOS 27, regardless of its age or speed.

Even if your Mac is on that list, however, a couple of macOS 27 features may not work because they have more stringent processor requirements. For instance, improved Dictation accuracy and customizing Siri’s expressivity (Apple’s term) and pace require a Mac with an M3 processor or newer and at least 12 GB of RAM.

New Macs that shipped after macOS 27 was released have it preinstalled. If necessary, you can use Migration Assistant to transfer files, accounts, and settings from your old Mac, and there are some additional steps to complete afterward.

Free disk space

The amount of free space macOS 27 requires for installation depends on a number of variables, including which version of macOS you’re upgrading from and which upgrade method you use. I suggest starting with at least 50 GB of free space before downloading the installer, which itself occupies up to about 21 GB. Some macOS 27 features will require increasing amounts of disk space as you use them, so it never hurts to have room to grow.

To find out how much free space a volume has, select the volume’s icon in the Finder and choose File > Get Info. The window that appears lists (among other things) the volume’s Capacity (total), Available (free), and Used space. Those values can sometimes be misleading.

Once you know your Mac qualifies, the next step is preparing it for the upgrade.

The marquee feature of macOS 27 Golden Gate is the long-promised and long-delayed Siri, now called Siri AI.

Unlike the original Siri, the new version—first promised for macOS 15 Sequoia in 2024—has conversational capabilities similar to other modern digital assistants like Alexa and Google Assistant, plus hooks into many parts of macOS and individual apps. It can function as a chatbot in the same vein as ChatGPT or Claude, and can incorporate information from the public web into its responses.

In short, Siri AI is now (close to) what it should have been many years ago, and reasonably on par with its competitors. It’s far more useful, and easier to work with, than any previous version of Siri. Unlike existing chatbots, Siri AI can access your private data—like email, photos, local files, and calendar events—to provide background information for answering questions. Even better, it doesn’t upload your data—Apple says private data doesn’t leave your device—or use it to teach their AI models.

Meanwhile, Apple Intelligence, a collection of features across Apple devices that incorporate Apple’s take on artificial intelligence, has expanded, and the lines between what’s now considered part of Siri and what’s considered part of Apple Intelligence have blurred. Apple appears to be leaning more heavily on the Siri branding for certain features that were previously called Apple Intelligence. In any case, it’s all of a piece now: enabling or disabling Siri (in System Settings > Siri) also enables or disables most of the other Apple Intelligence features.

Siri AI initially operates only in English, and a few features require an M3 or later Mac with at least 12 GB of RAM.

What follows is what is new with Siri AI and Apple Intelligence for macOS 27 users.

• Siri works more like a chatbot now: Activities that previously required an AI chatbot like ChatGPT or Claude, or a smart speaker-based system like Alexa or Google Assistant, can now be handled directly by Siri. You can have more natural and extensive back-and-forth conversations, with Siri being more aware of the context of what you’re asking than it did previously. You can drill down on responses or ask it to refine its results.
• Siri can access the web: As you may have inferred from that example, Siri was using information that wasn’t on my Mac or on Apple’s servers, but rather, “out there” on the web. So, you can ask about nearly any topic, and instead of merely being shown a list of potentially helpful webpages as in the past, now you get the information directly.
• Spotlight and Siri share an interface: In macOS 27, when you press the Spotlight shortcut (⌘-Space by default), you get a text field that serves both purposes (see Spotlight); the gray text in the field even reads Search or Ask. You can type the name of an app or file, and it will give you the same results as Spotlight always has. But you can also ask questions that Siri will answer from its nearly unlimited storehouse of information. Or you can use a plain-language description of what you’re looking for on your Mac and Siri will find it.
• Siri knows more about you: Siri can now understand what Apple calls “personal context,” which is to say, information that can be pulled from the various apps on your Mac—Calendar, Contacts, Mail, Messages, Notes, Photos, Reminders, and so on. That means Siri can incorporate information found in any of those apps into its responses and actions.
• Visual Intelligence comes to macOS: Visual Intelligence was first introduced in iOS and iPadOS, letting your device describe what it saw in a screenshot or the Camera app—or act on it, like extracting information from a poster or a bill. Now your Mac has it, too. This means you can ask Siri about anything on your screen, or have it do something with information on screen. To use this feature, you can simply invoke Siri (for example, by pressing ⌘-Space) and ask a question about something you see on your screen. Or, you can use a new screenshot mode that doesn’t automatically save screenshots. Press ⌘-Shift-6 and highlight a portion of your screen to ask Siri about something in that specific area, or press ⌘-Shift-Space to ask Siri about the frontmost window. Even if you don’t ask Siri anything, it may automatically identify plants, animals, and other elements found in screenshots. (macOS doesn’t yet apply Visual Intelligence to the FaceTime camera or Continuity camera.)

A new switch in System Settings > Siri, Automatic Visual Look Up, is labeled “Identify objects and places that appear in screenshots.” However, I’m unsure what effect this is intended to have, as I am seeing Visual Intelligence hints in screenshots whether or not this switch is turned on.

• The Siri app is new: There has always been an app on your Mac called Siri, but opening it did nothing more than display the Siri field for you to enter a request. Now, however, the Siri app shows you your previous conversations, and even lets you continue them. Siri conversations sync across your devices using iCloud.

  

• More actions are available: Siri could already take certain actions, such as changing your Mac’s volume or turning VoiceOver on or off. In macOS 27, thanks to an underlying framework called App Intents, Siri can take a much wider set of actions in a larger number of apps. For example, you could ask Siri to send a message in Messages containing the title of the song now playing in Music. Most of Apple’s apps already support actions like these, and third-party apps are getting there.
• You can customize Siri’s voice even more: In System Settings > Siri, click Voice, and you can select a base voice and then drag the Pace and Expressivity sliders as sample responses are played to dial in exactly the tone you prefer.

This feature requires an M3 or later processor and at least 12 GB of RAM.

• Writing Tools look different: If you select text you want to adjust using Apple Intelligence, you no longer see a Writing Tools submenu on the Edit menu or a Writing Tools badge, but rather a Siri badge in most apps, which you can click to reveal the existing tools arranged differently and without the “Writing Tools” label. Some apps give you access to the same tools via a Siri toolbar button.

Apple Intelligence features are currently available in Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, and Vietnamese.

macOS 27 Golden Gate is one of those rare upgrades (like going from Leopard to Snow Leopard, for those who remember it) that focuses more on improving what’s already there than on new features. To be sure, there are new features, including a few big ones. But even those—I’m thinking of Siri AI in particular—are mostly revisions of existing features rather than entirely novel capabilities.

In the past, Apple has released detailed descriptions of all the new features of that year’s version of macOS. This year’s macOS webpage, by contrast, is extremely light on details, focusing only on what Apple considers the key features. The extensive feature lists circulating online are based on a single slide shown in its entirety for less than two seconds during the WWDC keynote, which listed hundreds of changes across all the version 27 releases.

I read every one of those items and tried as many as I could, but many did not seem to function as described. For some features it is not clear whether Apple removed them or the description was simply too vague to work out what should happen. Apple stresses performance and reliability improvements, which are harder to test, and in some cases I never noticed the problems they addressed in the first place.

What follows is the part of that list that owes nothing to Siri AI or Apple Intelligence. Of the five headline areas in Apple’s own summary, three are AI. These 36 are the rest, and several of them matter more day to day. For the release as a whole, including what the AI features do, see what’s new in macOS 27 Golden Gate.

Here are all the macOS Golden Gate non-AI features:

1. macOS 27 Golden Gate lets Sidecar take touch

In macOS 27, Apple has extended Sidecar in such a way that, for the most part, your finger acts as a proxy for your mouse pointer. You can tap any icon or other control, scroll with one finger, use menus normally, and so on.

This feature requires that your iPad also be running iPadOS 27.

Mac news and rumor sites claim this feature isn’t so much about having more control from your iPad, but rather part of the groundwork for a hypothetical future touch-screen Mac, which would presumably allow a similar form of interaction.

2. The Liquid Glass slider

The most controversial change in Apple’s version 26 operating systems, including Tahoe, was the new Liquid Glass interface, which greatly increased the use of transparency and glass-like distortion effects that added some glitz to the screen without increasing usability. In many cases, the new appearance made text harder to read, icons more difficult to decipher, and windows more cumbersome to use.

Over subsequent Tahoe releases, Apple made some adjustments to Tahoe to address a few of the most frequent Liquid Glass criticisms. But in macOS 27 Golden Gate, Apple has gone further still, tacitly acknowledging that Liquid Glass went too far the first time around while retaining the overall look and feel introduced in Tahoe.

If you hated Liquid Glass in Tahoe, you’ll probably find it less objectionable in macOS 27, but make no mistake: the user interface looks far more like that of Tahoe than that of Sequoia.

In the WWDC keynote introducing the version 27 operating systems, Apple made a big deal about a new slider that ostensibly lets you decide how weak or strong the Liquid Glass transparency effects should be; it appears during installation and can also be adjusted at any time in System Settings > Appearance.

But, in fact, that’s not quite what it does. It merely changes the level of tinting for a handful of interface elements—particularly menus, Control Center, Notification Center, Spotlight, toolbars, and sidebars—that become a bit more or less transparent based on where the slider is set. Instead of having just two choices (Clear or Tinted), as in Tahoe, you can now select any point in the range between the two. But the effect is subtle, and the slider doesn’t change the transparency of the menu bar, Dock, Finder icons, or most other items.

If you want to get rid of most transparency altogether, you must still go to System Settings > Accessibility > Display and turn on “Reduce transparency.” That makes the menu bar, menus, sidebars, and toolbars opaque, while greatly reducing the transparency of the Dock and certain other elements. However, paradoxically, it also removes the shading from sidebars, making them less clearly separated from the rest of the window.

3. Sidebars reach the edge again

In Tahoe, window sidebars were inset from the window edges, reducing the amount of usable window space. In macOS 27, sidebars once again reach the edge of the window.

In addition, macOS 27 brings color back to certain sidebar icons, all of which were uniformly dark gray in Tahoe.

4. The active window is obvious

macOS 27 makes two overall changes to windows: showing the active window more prominently and adjusting the corner radius.

In Tahoe, it could be difficult to figure out which window on screen was active. macOS 27 adds cues to make that more evident: the sidebar’s color is darkened, and color icons appear only in the frontmost window.

Another small detail that irritated a lot of people was that Tahoe made window corners much rounder (supposedly to match the curvature of laptop screen corners), which—like the inset sidebars—reduced the amount of usable space in windows. But not all windows got this treatment, meaning some windows had much rounder corners than others, which looked awkward. In Tahoe, all window corners have the same amount of roundness.

5. Fewer icons cluttering menus

Tahoe added icons next to most menu commands, a change with no evident utility (and against Apple’s long-standing human interface guidelines) that made menus more cluttered and inconsistent in indentation. In macOS 27, those superfluous icons are gone, though icons that existed pre-Tahoe are still there.

6. App icons are crisper

Tahoe enforced the rounded-rectangle (or “squircle”) shape for all app icons from Apple and apps downloaded from the App Store. (Apps distributed outside the App Store could optionally work around this requirement.) In addition, Apple’s icons adopted a new look and feel that, unfortunately, also made them less distinctive. The icons haven’t changed dramatically in macOS 27, but they have become crisper and slightly more saturated.

7. iPhone Mirroring resizes freely

Previously, the iPhone Mirroring app had only three sizes: Small, Actual Size, and Large. Now, you can resize it by any arbitrary amount, either by dragging a corner with your mouse or by using the zoom controls (View > Zoom In or Zoom Out, ⌘-+ and ⌘-– (minus), respectively).

8. Control Center in iPhone Mirroring

You can now, finally, access Control Center on your iPhone from iPhone Mirroring—choose View > Control Center or press ⌘-4. And you can even watch copy-protected videos (such as those from Apple TV) on your iPhone while using iPhone Mirroring.

9. Two-finger swipe to refresh

In any app that already has a refresh or reload mechanism (such as Mail and Safari), you can swipe down with two fingers on a laptop’s built-in trackpad, a Magic Trackpad, or a Magic Mouse to refresh the page, just as you would (with one finger) on an iPhone or iPad.

10. Finder columns size themselves

In column view, right-click or Control-click in any column, choose Show View Options, and check “Resize columns to fit filenames.” The columns autosize to the width of the longest names in each one. Uncheck that box to go back to regular sizing. You can also right-click or Control-click the double-bar button at the bottom of a column divider to show a menu with Right Size This Column, Right Size All Columns Individually, and Right Size All Columns Equally, where “right size” is Apple’s term for sizing determined by filename length.

11. Freeform adds drawing and folders

The Freeform app now supports drawing tools, just as many iPhone and iPad apps have done for years (click the Add Drawing button on the toolbar). You can also add folders to organize your boards (click the Folder button on the toolbar), and each folder can be shared with others (hover over the folder name, click the More button, and choose Share). When sharing boards or folders, Freeform may suggest recipients based on the contents of what you’re sharing. Freeform now supports Dark Mode as well.

12. Notes gets drawing tools

As in Freeform, drawing tools are available in Notes: click the Add Drawing button on the toolbar.

13. Notes copies as Markdown

You can use Edit > Copy as Markdown to copy styled text from a note with Markdown tags, ready to paste elsewhere.

14. Notes links to its sections

If you use section headings in your note, you can insert links elsewhere in your note that jump to them. Choose Edit > Add Link (⌘-K), choose the section heading from the Link to Section pop-up menu, and click OK.
Finally, you can now add horizontal divider lines in your notes by choosing Edit > Insert Divider Line (⌘-L).

15. Passwords changes a password for you

Passwords can already identify passwords that are too weak, or that have appeared in data breaches. Passwords like these that need changing are marked with a red exclamation point and feature a Change Password button that takes you to the appropriate page on the website. macOS 27 takes that concept further, where Passwords automates the process: it goes to the site, chooses a strong new password, saves your new password on the site, and stores the new password in Passwords—all with one click. But this works only on a limited number of sites that support the mechanism Apple requires.

16. A reset button on the Lock Screen

If “Show password hints” is turned on and you begin typing your password on the Lock Screen, a small question mark button appears to its right. Click that, and a message appears along with a Reset Password button, which you can click if you need to reset your password.

17. Shared albums reach Windows and Android

When you share an album via iCloud, other participants can now see and interact with it even on Windows PCs and Android phones. In addition, you can “upgrade” your shared albums to show photos and videos at full resolution and enable several other features. To do so, right-click or Control-click an album in the sidebar and choose Upgrade Shared Album; this walks you through a series of steps, after which Photos spends a considerable amount of time—perhaps hours—thinking.

18. Home shows every camera

The Home app now offers a single interface in which you can see multiple cameras and search for events, as well as 4K camera recordings.

19. Podcasts can hide the video

When you’re watching a video podcast in Podcasts, there’s now a Hide Video button beneath the progress bar that does just that (while keeping the audio going); bring back the video by clicking Show Video.

20. Journal stamps the time

The Journal app now automatically adds a time stamp to new journal entries, rather than just a date. It also raises the attachment limit (though Apple doesn’t say by how much).

21. Mail strips list formatting

If you have a bulleted or numbered list in a message you’re composing, you can now choose Remove List Formatting from the Format > Lists submenu or from the Lists pop-up menu to revert the list to regular text.

22. Calendar notes keep styled text

Calendar now supports styled text in notes, which some calendar apps (such as Google Calendar) support. That is, if you’ve used styling such as bold or italics on a note you created somewhere else, that styling appears in Calendar, too.

23. Find My works the same everywhere

Find My on all three platforms is now a single operation: click (or tap) a person, device, or item in the sidebar to reveal basic information about the location (like Nearby or their distance, street, and city), along with contextually relevant buttons right below it. To get more information, you click (or tap) the More button for full details, including all the other information previously found on the Info popover.

There’s also a top-level Me tab, giving you more direct access to your own information, something already present for years in Find My for iPhone and iPad.

24. Messages retries a failed send

Messages has improved searching. For example, if you enter a contact’s nickname or a portion of their phone number, the search lists both names and conversations that match, not just individual messages containing that exact text. Searching for media is also reportedly better, though I have so far been unable to produce any good examples.

25. New child safety features

For years, families have been able to use the Ask to Buy feature, in which children must have an adult’s explicit approval to purchase apps from the App Store. In macOS 27, this concept expands to include websites. If you enable Ask to Browse for a child, each visit to a website that’s not already approved pops up an Ask to Browse message on the child’s device. If the child requests permission, the parent(s) see a request in Messages showing the website in question, along with Approve and Decline buttons.

Ask to Browse works in Safari and other WebKit browsers, but not in Firefox or Chromium-based browsers, which means that any child who can figure out how to download an alternative browser can bypass this feature with trivial ease.

26. Communication Safety blocks gore

Communication Safety is an existing feature that, if enabled, warns children before displaying nude images in apps such as FaceTime and Messages, whether those images are incoming or outgoing. macOS 27 expands this to block violent or gory images, giving the child a way to end the conversation without seeing the objectionable material.

27. Time allowances for apps

Parents now have detailed controls available for restricting when, and for how long, children can use certain types of apps (including games and social media apps). You can, for example, restrict your child to playing games for just an hour a day, or set up a schedule with fine-grained controls, such as “you can use apps A, B, and C before or after school, but only D or E while at school, and F and G only in the evenings.”

28. Shared iCloud links get access requests

If you right-click or Control-click a file or folder in iCloud Drive and choose Share, then choose Share a Link from the pop-up menu, you now see a couple of changes in the interface:

If you click the text under that menu (“People you choose can view/edit”), the display expands as usual to show who can access the item and with what permissions. But there’s a new “Allow access requests” checkbox here. If you select that, then send a link to a group (as opposed to a single person), each recipient must explicitly request permission to access it, and you must approve that request. Only then is that person added to the Participants list.

A new Copy Link command appears on the Share menu. If you choose that, a dialog appears, with two options: click Continue to share in the normal way (keeping in mind the extra step described above if you share it with a group), or click Allow Anyone with the Link to copy the shareable link to your clipboard with no constraints on who can use it.

29. Battery settings split in two

Where Tahoe had a Low Power Mode pop-up menu with options Only on Battery, Only on Power Adapter, Never, or Always, macOS 27 instead has two pop-up menus, one for “On battery” and the other for “On power adapter.” For each one, you can choose Automatic, Low Power, or High Power.

30. AutoFill from a third-party manager

In the AutoFill & Passwords category, there’s a new “AutoFill from” switch, with entries indicating which app(s) can be used to supply AutoFill data. By default, Passwords is the only option (turned on by default), but if you have one or more third-party password managers, they may also appear here.

31. Borders around controls

Display: There’s a new “Show borders” switch, which adds borders around toolbar controls, Search fields, and various other interface items to more clearly distinguish their boundaries; this replaces and significantly improves on the previous setting “Show toolbar button shapes.”

Subtitles and Captioning: This category, which replaces Captions, adds three new controls to fine-tune when and where subtitles/captions appear: “Show when muted,” “Show on skip back,” and “Apply across apps.”

32. Hide your name on the Lock Screen

A new “Show user name and photo” switch is on by default, giving you the same behavior seen in Tahoe and earlier. But if you turn it off, usernames and photos no longer appear when your Mac is locked, which might be better for privacy in settings where a Mac may be visible to the public.

33. New keyboards and interface languages

Keyboards are now available for Afrikaans, Basque, Baybayin, Blackfoot, Comanche, Cree, English (Philippines), Galician, Guarani, Kiowa, Luxembourgish, Tsuu’tina, Xhosa, and Zulu.

You can now set the interface language for macOS itself to English (Canada)—woo hoo!—and English (Philippines) in System Settings > General > Language & Region > Preferred Languages.

34. Shortcuts gets new actions and storage

Shortcuts features several new systemwide actions:

Notification: This action runs when you receive a notification from a specified app.

Screenshot: This action runs when you save a screenshot to Photos, Files, and/or your Clipboard.

Store Content, Get Stored Content, and Delete Stored Content: You can now store data within Shortcuts itself, rather than having to create and manage external files.

35. Spotlight’s four categories

Here are the four Spotlight categories:

Apps (⌘-1): In this view, only apps are shown (regardless of where they’re located on your Mac). Recently used apps appear at the top, until you start typing.

Files (⌘-2): Similarly, in this view, only files and folders appear, but that includes apps, too! Again, recent files appear at the top (below Suggestions, explained in a moment) until you start typing.

36. A new macOS 27 menu bar icon

When you connect an Ethernet cable to your Mac (which, for laptops, requires an adapter), the Wi-Fi icon on the menu bar changes to an Ethernet icon; clicking this displays information about your Ethernet connection.

Now that you’ve gone through all the preliminary steps, it’s time to begin the upgrade to macOS 27 Golden Gate. For most people, Plan A—essentially letting the installer do what it wants—is the logical choice. And remember, if it doesn’t work out for any reason, you can always move on later to Plan B, a clean install. Nevertheless, because you may encounter some questions or confusion during the process, I detail exactly what steps to take from start to finish.

Start the installer

Before you run the installer, if you haven’t already done so:

• If you are installing onto a laptop, connect its AC adapter to a power source. (If you forget to do this, the installer will prompt you.)
• Quit all open apps. (The installer attempts to do this for you—and prompts you if it can’t—but you might as well take care of this beforehand.)

To begin the process, double-click the Install macOS Golden Gate icon in your /Applications folder or wherever else you put it. A window appears with just one button: Continue. Click it!

As a reminder, if you chose to use Software Update, there’s no separate installer to run or destination to select.

The Software License Agreement appears next; click Agree, and then click Agree again in the confirmation dialog to proceed.

Select a destination

The next screen—assuming you are using the standalone installer and not Software Update—asks you to confirm which volume you want to install macOS 27 onto. In most cases, it displays its best guess—typically your startup volume—but you may see multiple disks here, in which case you should select the one you want. If the volume where you want to install macOS 27 isn’t visible, you should see a Show All Disks button; click that to display all available options and then make your selection.

If the installer can’t use a volume as the destination for any reason, that volume is dimmed; click it for an explanation. If the volume is empty or contains a recent version of macOS, it should be OK; if not, the instructions may tell you to back it up and erase it. (In some cases you may be prompted to reformat it.)

If you see an “Unsupported partition structure” error message, see what to do when the volume can’t be selected.

With your desired destination volume selected, click Continue or Install (the wording varies depending on your setup). Next, you’re prompted to enter your administrator credentials (in order to add a helper app); do so and click OK (or, in some cases, Unlock).

The installer begins copying files. The copy process typically takes several minutes, but when it finishes, the installer tells you that it will restart your computer automatically in 30 seconds; you can also click Restart to skip the wait. If any apps are still open and the installer is unable to close them automatically (for example, if there are unsaved changes you must respond to), the installer displays a prompt asking you to click Close Other Applications.

Take a meditation break

Depending on a number of variables, including the speed of your Mac and the size of your disk, installation may take less than a half hour or as long as several hours. Apart from the steps you’ve already performed, the process normally requires no intervention until the very end. Until then, you won’t be able to use your Mac for anything else, so now’s a good time to take a break to do some meditation, tai chi, qigong, or yoga—you have a bit of time to kill.

If you insist on watching the installer’s progress bar gradually make its way across the screen, beware: its time estimates (“About 43 minutes,” “Less than a minute,” etc.) are notoriously inaccurate, especially near the beginning and end of the process. And remember: a watched installer never boils.

As the installer progresses, your Mac will restart one or more times, and it may make some unusual sounds (like a long beep). You may also hear your Mac’s startup chime—perhaps even more than once. At the end of the installation, you’ll continue with several additional configuration steps.

When it finishes, Setup Assistant takes over.

The most controversial change in macOS 26 Tahoe, was the new Liquid Glass interface, which greatly increased the use of transparency and glass-like distortion effects that added some glitz to the screen without increasing usability. In many cases, the new appearance made text harder to read, icons more difficult to decipher, and windows more cumbersome to use.

Over subsequent Tahoe releases, Apple made some adjustments to Tahoe to address a few of the most frequent Liquid Glass criticisms. But in macOS 27 Golden Gate, Apple has gone further still, tacitly acknowledging that Liquid Glass went too far the first time around while retaining the overall look and feel introduced in Tahoe.

If you hated Liquid Glass in Tahoe, you’ll probably find it less objectionable in macOS 27, but make no mistake: the user interface looks far more like that of Tahoe than that of Sequoia.

The Liquid Glass slider

In the WWDC keynote introducing macOS 27 Golden Gate, Apple made a big deal about a new slider that ostensibly lets you decide how weak or strong the Liquid Glass transparency effects should be; it appears during installation and can also be adjusted at any time in System Settings > Appearance.

But, in fact, that’s not quite what it does. It merely changes the level of tinting for a handful of interface elements—particularly menus, Control Center, Notification Center, Spotlight, toolbars, and sidebars—that become a bit more or less transparent based on where the slider is set. Instead of having just two choices (Clear or Tinted), as in Tahoe, you can now select any point in the range between the two. But the effect is subtle, and the slider doesn’t change the transparency of the menu bar, Dock, Finder icons, or most other items.

If you want to get rid of most transparency altogether, you must still go to System Settings > Accessibility > Display and turn on “Reduce transparency.” That makes the menu bar, menus, sidebars, and toolbars opaque, while greatly reducing the transparency of the Dock and certain other elements. However, paradoxically, it also removes the shading from sidebars, making them less clearly separated from the rest of the window.

Sidebar improvements

In Tahoe, window sidebars were inset from the window edges, reducing the amount of usable window space. In macOS 27, sidebars once again reach the edge of the window. In addition, macOS 27 brings color back to certain sidebar icons, all of which were uniformly dark gray in Tahoe.

Window improvements

macOS 27 makes two overall changes to windows: showing the active window more prominently and adjusting the corner radius.

In Tahoe, it could be difficult to figure out which window on screen was active. macOS 27 adds cues to make that more evident: the sidebar’s color is darkened, and color icons appear only in the frontmost window.

Another small detail that irritated a lot of people was that Tahoe made window corners much rounder (supposedly to match the curvature of laptop screen corners), which—like the inset sidebars—reduced the amount of usable space in windows. But not all windows got this treatment, meaning some windows had much rounder corners than others, which looked awkward. In macOS 27, all window corners have the same amount of roundness.

Fewer menu icons

Tahoe added icons next to most menu commands, a change with no evident utility (and against Apple’s long-standing human interface guidelines) that made menus more cluttered and inconsistent in indentation. In macOS 27, those superfluous icons are gone, though icons that existed pre-Tahoe are still there.

Updated app icons

Tahoe enforced the rounded-rectangle (or “squircle”) shape for all app icons from Apple and apps downloaded from the App Store. (Apps distributed outside the App Store could optionally work around this requirement.) In addition, Apple’s icons adopted a new look and feel that, unfortunately, also made them less distinctive. The icons haven’t changed dramatically in macOS 27, but they have become crisper and slightly more saturated.

The same slider exists on iPhone and iPad, where it works the same way but changes less; that is covered in how to reduce Liquid Glass transparency in iOS 27.

These six apps gained smaller features in macOS 27 Golden Gate, though two of them close gaps that have annoyed people for years.

Freeform on the Mac

The Freeform app now supports drawing tools, just as many iPhone and iPad apps have done for years (click the Add Drawing button on the toolbar). You can also add folders to organize your boards (click the Folder button on the toolbar), and each folder can be shared with others (hover over the folder name, click the More button, and choose Share). When sharing boards or folders, Freeform may suggest recipients based on the contents of what you’re sharing. In addition, Freeform now supports Dark Mode.

Image Playground on the Mac

The Image Playground app, which lets you alter or create AI images in various styles using a text prompt, now has a much simpler interface. Instead of making you choose a style from a menu, for example, you simply describe exactly what you want. You can also describe changes, and the image adjusts accordingly.

iPhone Mirroring

Previously, the iPhone Mirroring app had only three sizes: Small, Actual Size, and Large. Now, you can resize it by any arbitrary amount, either by dragging a corner with your mouse or by using the zoom controls (View > Zoom In or Zoom Out, ⌘-+ and ⌘-– (minus), respectively).

In addition, you can now, finally, access Control Center on your iPhone from iPhone Mirroring—choose View > Control Center or press ⌘-4. And you can even watch copy-protected videos (such as those from Apple TV) on your iPhone while using iPhone Mirroring.

Journal on the Mac

The Journal app now automatically adds a time stamp to new journal entries, rather than just a date. It also raises the attachment limit (though Apple doesn’t say by how much).

Podcasts on the Mac

When you’re watching a video podcast in Podcasts, there’s now a Hide Video button beneath the progress bar that does just that (while keeping the audio going); bring back the video by clicking Show Video.

Safari on the Mac

Safari has three notable new features, all of which rely on Apple Intelligence:

• Automatic tab grouping: If you go to Safari > Settings > Tabs and choose Automatically Create Topics from the “Organize tabs” pop-up menu, Safari examines the contents of each page and groups them by similarity, reducing the amount of space taken up by open tabs. Click a group to expand its contents.
• Notify Me: Safari can now monitor a webpage and let you know when it changes. To set a notification, click the Page button in the address bar and choose Notify Me. Describe the type of change you’re looking for (such as a new news article or a change in a particular number), click Edit to adjust when and how often Safari should check, and click Done.
• Describe an extension: Can’t find the extension you need? Safari can create a custom extension for you on the fly. It syncs to your other devices via iCloud but can’t be shared with anyone else. To create an extension, click the Page button in the address bar and choose Describe an Extension.

The older the operating system you’re upgrading from, the more changes you’ll notice in macOS 27 Golden Gate—and the greater the likelihood that you’ll encounter compatibility problems with old hardware and software. You’ll find great new features, but you may also have to abandon software you’ve used for many years, adopt new habits, or reorient your thinking about how a Mac works. Before you jump in, you should understand what awaits you.

Read the sections below covering any operating systems you’ve never installed on your Mac.

Changes in Tahoe

In macOS 26 Tahoe, Apple introduced a new numbering scheme that’s now used across all their operating systems; the number represents the year after the operating system is released. Tahoe introduced the somewhat controversial Liquid Glass look and feel, as well as greatly expanded customization options for Control Center and your menu bar. It expanded iPhone Continuity features by bringing the Phone app to macOS, as well as displaying live activities from your iPhone on your Mac’s menu bar. Spotlight was redesigned—not just visually, but also with support for initiating numerous actions without opening an app, jumping right to an action with quick keys, and keeping a history of items you’ve copied to your clipboard. New apps included Apps (which replaced Launchpad), Games, Journal, and Magnifier. Live Translation in FaceTime, Messages, and Phone adds audio and text translation in real time as you type and speak when you’re conversing with someone who speaks a different language. And shortcuts in the Shortcuts app can run automatically on a schedule or in response to various events, while new Shortcuts actions offer a variety of Apple Intelligence features you can use to create more powerful automations.

Changes in Sequoia

macOS 15 Sequoia (along with iOS 18 and iPadOS 18) introduced Apple Intelligence, Apple’s spin on artificial intelligence (AI), with changes to Safari, Siri, Mail, Messages, Notes, Photos, and other apps, plus writing tools throughout the system and optional integration with ChatGPT. It also added window tiling, the iPhone Mirroring app to interact with your iPhone using your Mac, and the Passwords app for easier access to usernames and passwords. Messages gained support for formatted text, animated text effects, scheduled messages, and more flexible tapbacks, while Notes added live audio transcription, collapsible sections, text highlighting, and Math Notes, a simple new way to perform math calculations. Smaller, but (mostly) welcome, changes also appeared in numerous built-in apps, including Calculator, Calendar, Finder, Freeform, Home, Mail, Maps, Music, Photos, Podcasts, Reminders, and Weather.

Changes in Sonoma

macOS 14 Sonoma didn’t look much different from Ventura, but it included a number of useful new features, such as visual reactions and screen-sharing tools for videoconferencing, widgets on the desktop, and significant improvements to Messages, Notes, and Reminders (plus smaller changes in a variety of other apps). It came with Safari 17, which introduced profiles to separate your Safari data into multiple contexts, the capability to turn any website into a standalone app, and a way to share passwords and passkeys securely. Numerous other privacy and security features were included, such as sensitive content warnings, more detailed permissions settings for apps that access your photos and calendars, and alerts about apps that monitor what’s on your screen.

Changes in Ventura

Perhaps the most obvious change in macOS 13 Ventura was the transformation of System Preferences into System Settings, making it look and act much like the Settings app in iOS and iPadOS. This was no mere name change; Apple massively rearranged the names and locations of settings, making them challenging for even a veteran Mac nerd to locate (see what changed in System Settings). Another feature borrowed from iPadOS was Stage Manager, which adds to the existing list of a dozen or so ways to manage apps and windows. (It has proved not to be very popular.)

Safari added a number of small features, most notably support for passkeys, which are the easier, more secure successor to passwords. Mail and Messages gained the capability to unsend messages, and both apps also saw other improvements (such as scheduling messages in Mail and editing already-sent messages in Messages). Photos added a new iCloud Shared Photo Library, which makes it much simpler to share photos within a family, among other features. And a new Advanced Data Protection feature lets you optionally add end-to-end encryption to most iCloud data.

As iPhones are known for their excellent cameras and Macs are not, Apple added a feature called Continuity Camera that lets you use your iPhone as a high-quality webcam for your Mac. Apple also added the new Freeform app for solo or shared whiteboarding. Beyond that, Apple made small changes to numerous system-level capabilities (such as Live Text, Memoji, and Spotlight) and built-in apps (including Clock, Weather, Notes, and Reminders).

Changes in Monterey

Monterey didn’t have a lot of big, flashy features, but it did introduce some important new technologies, such as SharePlay (a way to enjoy synchronized media with someone in another location while chatting using FaceTime), Universal Control (which lets you control multiple Macs and iPads with a single keyboard and pointing device), and Focus (which upgraded Do Not Disturb with user-definable categories, letting you specify who or what can disturb you and when). Monterey also brought Shortcuts to macOS, finally giving Apple users a simple yet powerful cross-platform automation tool. And Monterey was the first version of macOS to support the paid iCloud+ tiers, with exclusive features like Private Relay and Hide My Email.

Safari got a modest overhaul, featuring a revised tab bar, tab groups, better searching, and a redesigned sidebar—plus better privacy protection. FaceTime gained features that help you look and sound better, make better use of group conversations, and even communicate with people using non-Apple devices, while Messages made it easier to find links, photos, and other items people shared with you. The Maps app gained a bunch of new features, including an interactive globe, new driving and transit features, and better searching. Monterey also introduced AirPlay to Mac, Live Text (automatic, instant OCR for images), and Quick Note (to create new notes without opening the Notes app).

Mail on the Mac

Apple says that Mail in macOS 27 Golden Gate has improved, more relevant search results. When you type in the Search field, a banner appears telling you that Mail looks for meaning beyond the specific words you enter, presumably using Apple Intelligence. I can’t say I noticed any improvements during my limited testing, but perhaps those will become more evident over time.

Suggestions may appear, too, when Mail notices something in a conversation that you may want to take action on; Apple’s examples are adding a calendar event or searching for a photo. I have not yet seen these suggestions in my testing.

If you have a bulleted or numbered list in a message you’re composing, you can now choose Remove List Formatting from the Format > Lists submenu or from the Lists pop-up menu to revert the list to regular text.

Messages on the Mac

Messages has improved searching. For example, if you enter a contact’s nickname or a portion of their phone number, the search lists both names and conversations that match, not just individual messages containing that exact text. Searching for media is also reportedly better, though I have so far been unable to produce any good examples.

Like Mail, Messages may offer suggestions as to actions you can take relevant to the current conversation. Smart Replies may also attempt, possibly without success, to mimic your style. And, if a message fails to send, Messages now retries it automatically.

Find My on the Mac

Apple decided in iOS 27, iPadOS 27 and macOS 27 to make the Find My interactions consistent. Previously, you had to click a person, device, or item, then click the Info button on the map to reveal information. It was a fussy way to do it, particularly when you could just tap one of those people or things on an iPhone or iPad and reveal an action sheet, where you could access Directions, Contact, or Play, among other features.

Now, Find My on all three platforms is a single operation: click or tap a person, device, or item in the sidebar to reveal basic information about the location (like Nearby or their distance, street, and city), along with contextually relevant buttons right below it. To get more information, you click or tap the More button for full details, including all the other information previously found on the Info popover.

There’s also a top-level Me tab, giving you more direct access to your own information, something already present for years in Find My for iPhone and iPad.

Maps on the Mac

The Maps app now shows Guides for more locations, and, for certain locations, Satellite view yields more detailed images (enhanced, of course, with Apple Intelligence). I tried zooming in on Apple Park in Cupertino and the improved clarity was quite striking. The same was true for a few other urban locations in the United States that I spot-checked. But all the Canadian locations I tried, including Toronto and Vancouver, looked the same. Whether or when that will change, I have no idea.

Passwords on the Mac

Passwords can already identify passwords that are too weak, or that have appeared in data breaches. Passwords like these that need changing are marked with a red exclamation point and feature a Change Password button that takes you to the appropriate page on the website. macOS 27 takes that concept further, where Passwords automates the process: it goes to the site, chooses a strong new password, saves your new password on the site, and stores the new password in Passwords—all with one click. But this works only on a limited number of sites that support the mechanism Apple requires.

In addition, if “Show password hints” is turned on and you begin typing your password on the Lock Screen, a small question mark button appears to its right. Click that, and a message appears along with a Reset Password button, which you can click if you need to reset your password.

Phone on the Mac

If you’re on a voice call in the Phone app, relevant information, pulled from other apps like Calendar, Contacts, Mail, and Messages using Apple Intelligence, may appear on screen — Call Context. For example, if you’re calling a hotel, you may see the email they sent you when you booked your room.

I have not yet encountered a situation in which I used the Phone app on my Mac and also had contextually relevant information, so I can’t say precisely what this surfaced information looks like.

Home on the Mac

The Home app now offers a single interface in which you can see multiple cameras and search for events, as well as 4K camera recordings.

Additional features Apple announced are synthesized images from multiple cameras and natural-language search. These extras require at least a 2 TB iCloud+ plan, and I believe a 3rd-generation Apple TV running tvOS 27. Neither of the authors has seen these features appear.