During the keynote presentation at Monday's WWDC, Apple previewed the next version of macOS. The official name of the Mac’s operating system is macOS 27 Golden Gate, keeping the California naming scheme around.
This year's update is focused on the relaunched Siri (now known as “Siri AI”), which really strives to transform into a proper AI chatbot along the lines of ChatGPT or Google Gemini—with a unique Apple twist.
Is Your Mac Compatible With macOS Golden Gate?
AccordionItemContainerButtonLargeChevronLast year, Apple announced that macOS 26 Tahoe would be the last update to support Intel-powered Macs. The new update, macOS 27 Golden Gate, is only compatible with Apple Silicon 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 before 2024.
One more caveat: Siri AI will not be immediately available in the EU or China due to regulatory concerns.
When Is the MacOS 27 Golden Gate Beta Releasing?
AccordionItemContainerButtonLargeChevronMacOS Golden Gate beta is available to install for developers today, while the official public beta will roll out in July. We don't typically recommend using the developer beta on your main computer, as they are still prone to serious bugs and won't necessarily function well with all your software and accessories.
However, if you want to take the plunge to try out these new features, you can go sign up for a developer account and enable Developer Mode. After backing up your system, you should see it available as an available update in System Settings under General > Software Update.
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, is based on Google Gemini, giving it highly improved natural language processing as well as the latest computer vision and image generation models.
But in macOS Golden Gate, Siri is now fully 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, and then click on Siri AI to start prompting right in the Siri AI app. It's also being built right 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.
Apple Intelligence Apps
Courtesy of AppleThe 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. Lastly, the new version of Safari will work the Passwords app to automatically fix website login passwords that are deemed no longer safe to use.
The other exciting 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. 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
Courtesy of AppleWhile 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. This can be customized in System Settings, letting you change the transparency level using a slider.
This video is about Apple-macOS-27-uniform-toolbar-260608Courtesy of AppleApple 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. And perhaps my most requested feature, every window has the same corner radius to the window control buttons.
Beyond the visual elements, Apple says it's also 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 now, as is opening Mission Control.
