What are the biggest new features in macOS 27 Golden Gate?

Here is our pick of the macOS Golden Gate features that we think will make the biggest difference.

Siri AI could finally become genuinely useful

Golden Gate’s biggest upgrade is the complete overhaul of Siri. Instead of relying mainly on simple commands, Siri can understand personal context, search across files and photos using natural language, compare information, answer questions about what’s on screen and perform more complex actions across apps. This could be the most significant Siri upgrade since the assistant first launched.

Smarter Search and Spotlight

Apple has rebuilt the indexing system that powers Spotlight, Mail and Photos. The result should be faster searches, more relevant results and a better understanding of what users are actually looking for. Since search is something most Mac users rely on throughout the day, this under-the-hood improvement could prove to be one of Golden Gate’s most useful changes.

Safari gets useful automation features

Safari gains several AI-powered and automation features designed to reduce everyday friction. Tabs can be organized into related groups, Notify Me can monitor webpages and alert you when content changes, and Safari can automatically update compromised passwords on supported websites.

More powerful AI photo editing

Golden Gate also brings more advanced editing tools to Photos. Users can extend images beyond their original boundaries, adjust perspective and composition, remove unwanted objects more effectively and create new imagery with Image Playground. Some of these features will arrive in later macOS 27 updates rather than being available at launch.

Much stronger parental controls

Family features receive a substantial upgrade too. Parents can approve websites through Ask to Browse, approve new contacts, monitor a wider range of potentially harmful content and use updated Screen Time recommendations. For families with children using Apple devices, these are among the most practical improvements in macOS 27.

What are the key differences between Golden Gate vs Tahoe?

Siri is dramatically more capable, adding personal context, Visual Intelligence, document comparison, and natural-language automation.

Liquid Glass has been refined, with better readability, transparency controls, coloured sidebar icons, and improved visual consistency.

Parental controls have been expanded significantly, including website approvals, contact approvals, and enhanced Communication Safety.

Safari is proactive, adding page monitoring, AI tab management, and automatic password replacement.

Search has major backend improvements, enabling it to deliver faster and more accurate results across Spotlight, Mail, and Photos.

What’s new in macOS Golden Gate?

macOS 27 Golden Gate represents a significant step forward for the Mac, with a strong focus on Apple Intelligence, refinements to the Liquid Glass interface introduced in macOS 26 Tahoe, and major improvements to search, Safari, Photos and parental controls. It also marks the end of Intel Mac support, with Golden Gate available only for Macs with Apple silicon.

The main changes include:

Enhanced parental controls: Stronger family-safety tools, including improved website, contact and Screen Time controls. For families with children using Apple devices, these are among the most practical improvements in macOS 27.

Siri AI: A much more capable Siri with better conversational understanding, personal context and onscreen awareness.

Improved Apple Intelligence: New AI features that can work across apps and surface relevant information.

Faster performance: Quicker app launches, searches, AirDrop transfers and networking, alongside better overall responsiveness.

Smarter Spotlight: Faster, more relevant search results across Spotlight, Mail and Photos.

AI photo editing: More powerful editing tools in Photos, including image expansion, improved object removal and generative features.

Liquid Glass refinements: Improvements to the interface introduced with macOS Tahoe, with better readability and consistency.

Safari upgrades: New automation features, smarter tab organization and improved password management.

Is the Liquid Glass design any better?

macOS Tahoe arrived in 2025 with the new Liquid Glass graphical sheen on the interface. This was rolled out across all Apple products, but it’s fair to say that it wasn’t entirely loved by everyone. The refracted light effect could be quite smart looking, but some complained it was harder to see things clearly.

Apple seems to have paid attention, as macOS Golden Gate has been refined to deal with these concerns. It’s using a new process, and Apple announced that “to ensure exceptional readability, we tuned Liquid Glass so it diffuses complex content behind it much more effectively, while also creating more depth and separation.”

There’s now the addition of a slider in Settings that allows users to decide on the level of clarity or tint of Liquid Glass, so you can tailor it to your own preferences. 

Apple has also tweaked the interface in macOS Golden Gate with the addition of toolbars across the tops of apps where there are a number of control options. This adds a bit of needed structure and should keep things legible on the page. Sidebar icons have also been given back their color, so it’s more instantly distinguishable which option is selected. All app windows will now feature the same rounded corners, to give a more consistent look, and icons have also been given a spruce-up to make them appear fresh. 

Will Golden Gate make my Mac faster?

One of the main focuses of macOS Golden Gate is system performance, with Apple reworking a number of the underlying processes that power the operating system. Early reports from beta testers suggest that the update makes Macs feel noticeably faster and more responsive, with quicker app launches, snappier Spotlight searches, faster AirDrop transfers and improved networking. Some testers have even reported noticeable speed improvements on older supported Macs.

Apple has also improved support for external displays, Thunderbolt and Bluetooth, while refinements to the Liquid Glass interface should make macOS feel smoother and more consistent in everyday use. In our own testing of the Golden Gate beta on a MacBook Neo with an A18 Pro chip and 8GB of RAM, Siri performance was perfectly acceptable. There was some processing time when handling requests, but no obvious lag attributable to the chip or limited memory.

Search is another area where Apple has made significant changes. A revamped indexing process should provide more accurate Spotlight results, as well as improve the relevance of searches in Mail and Photos. That is particularly welcome after some macOS Tahoe users experienced Spotlight-related freezes, including Macworld staff. As we detailed in System freezes plagued my Mac for months. A simple fix finally solved it, one Mac was found to have nearly 10,000 corrupted files in its Spotlight metadata folder, causing repeated system stalls. Golden Gate’s reworked indexing system is intended to make search faster and more reliable from the outset.

If you’re running an Apple silicon Mac, Golden Gate should therefore offer a tangible performance improvement, particularly when launching apps, searching, transferring files and working across the system. There is one important limitation, though: macOS Golden Gate drops support for Intel-based Macs altogether, so Intel Mac owners won’t be able to install the update.

Parents get more control over child accounts

Apple has always been a company that takes security and privacy seriously, and that looks to be enhanced with the additional child-safety features in macOS Golden Gate. Working with the American Academy of Pediatrics, Apple has created a child safety set of tools that starts with a setup guide that allows them to decide on the apps their progeny can use on their device. 

Of course, this capability was already in place in macOS Tahoe, but now Golden Gate adds an important improvement with Ask to Browse, whereby any new website a child wants to access in Safari has to be approved by the parents (usually via Messages). There’s also an approval restriction for any new contacts a child wants to connect with. Communication Safety now acts not only as a constant monitor for any sexual images or videos that the child is being sent or wants to send, but also for gory or violent content. The idea is to give parents more tools to protect their kids from the darker and more unsavoury elements of digital life. Yes, the settings will mainly apply to iPads and iPhones, but they can be controlled and monitored from your Mac.

Time Allowances provide parents with the ability to set daily limits on three categories of content – Entertainment, Social Media, and Gaming – but it can confusing to know what these should be. Apple now includes recommended amounts for each, as researched by the American Academy of Pediatrics, so they have a good idea of what’s healthy. These are determined by age and can be manually adjusted by the parent at any time, as well as the option to set up schedules that vary depending on the day. 

How much smarter is Siri in Golden Gate?

Siri in macOS Golden Gate is significantly more capable thanks to new Apple Intelligence models. You can ask Siri to find files, photos or other information simply by describing what you’re looking for. 

Apple says that the new models work with the principles of Personal Context understanding (all the things relative to you) and Broad world knowledge (all information on the web) to give you the answers you want to questions, be they which shed to buy or where to find those photos of that trip to Paris. 

Visual Intelligence allows you to highlight something on your screen and ask Siri AI for information about it, and there’s the dedicated Siri app that allows you to keep all of your conversations in one place, no matter if they were on your iPhone, iPad or Mac. 

There’s plenty of scope for Siri AI, with the WWDC demonstration showing the ability to highlight files then ask it to compare them and show you the results, you can also open a context menu and use the Ask Siri option to find out more information about something. Having trouble creating Shortcuts? In macOS Golden Gate you can describe what you want and Siri AI will build it for you.  

As with any AI software, we’ll need more time with the final release to judge how reliably these features work in everyday use, but they represent a major step forward from macOS Tahoe. 

Better Writing Tools in Mail and Messages

Apple Intelligence first appeared in macOS Sequoia, but there were delays in features being rolled out, so it felt more like the AI era arrived with macOS Tahoe. Writing Tools is probably one of the most used of the AI upgrades, and with macOS Golden Gate these get another level of capabilities thanks to the new AI models. 

In Mail and Messages you can now not only generate content from a prompt, but Siri AI will tailor it to match the language and styling you’d normally use with that particular person. Say, for example, you want to send your client a proposal, then Siri AI will look at previous interactions between you and them and match the style – presumably a formal one. While, if you want to let a friend know that you’re having a BBQ and want them to come along, Siri AI will produce a suitably amiable and informal draft. 

It can also analyse any writing you’ve done and give tips on how it could be improved or made to better suit the situation in which it will be used. 

What’s new in Safari?

Apple’s browser gets the AI treatment in macOS Golden Gate, with some nice touches that can smooth out life online. The app can automatically group tabs into related topics, which can make researching things a bit more organised.

If you’re waiting for a news story or box office to open, then the new Notify Me feature will be a godsend. Simply tell Safari to watch the page, then you can carry on with other things while it constantly checks and then notifies you when the change occurs.

Change your passwords with Siri AI

If you’re tired of constantly being bombarded by notifications that several of your passwords have been compromised in some security breach, but don’t have the time to sort it out – help is at hand. Apple states that you can instruct Safari to automatically go to all those affected sites, log in to your accounts, then create new safe passwords which it stores in the Passwords app. 

What new AI photo tools are included?

You can’t have an AI updated without it somehow being related to photo editing, and that’s the case with macOS Golden Gate. The new Apple Intelligence models allow for some impressive editing and image creation. You can expand existing images, with the AI generating the extra data to make it look like it was always there.

There’s also the ability to change the angle and perspective of an image, essentially meaning you can recompose the shot after the fact. As you’d expect, there’s also improved ways to remove items from the shots too, creating the perfect moment that never really happened. 

Image playground also gets beefed up in macOS Golden Gate, with even more ways to auto-generate images from simple prompts, then iteratively alter them by conversing with the AI. Apple did state that this would have daily limits though, with higher allowances linked to your iCloud+ subscription. 

Which Macs will run macOS 27 Golden Gate

You’ll be able to upgrade to macOS Golden Gate if you have any of the following hardware:

MacBook Neo (2026)

MacBook Air with Apple silicon (2020 and later)

MacBook Pro with Apple silicon (2020 and later)

iMac with Apple silicon (2021 and later)

Mac mini with Apple silicon (2020 and later)

Mac Studio (2022 and later)

Mac Pro with Apple silicon (2023)

Apple does state that some of the high-end AI features will require more modern hardware – M3 and 12GB RAM or better – but this is limited to things like improved diction and the ability to create voices for Siri, which we’re thinking shouldn’t hamper too many people. 

When was macOS Golden Gate released?

Apple released macOS 27 Golden Gate on September 14, 2026, as a free software update for compatible Macs.

Siri AI is rolling out initially in English, while some other Apple Intelligence features are due to arrive in future macOS 27 updates. These include the new Spatial Reframing and Extend tools in Photos, as well as the enhanced Clean Up tool.

macOS Golden Gate vs Tahoe: Is it worth upgrading?

If your Mac supports macOS Golden Gate, there are plenty of reasons to upgrade. The biggest improvements come from Siri AI and Apple Intelligence, but faster performance, improved search, refinements to Liquid Glass and better parental controls should benefit users even if AI isn’t their main reason for updating.

Owners of Apple silicon Macs will get the most from Golden Gate, although some of its most advanced features won’t be available on every Mac and a handful of headline additions are arriving in later updates.

Read How to update macOS.