8 Great New Features of MacOS 27 Golden Gate to Explore
It’s official; MacOS Golden Gate 27 is here, and if you’re already running the latest version of MacOS, or you’re just curious about some of the new features and changes, you’ll appreciate knowing what’s new and improved. While may of the biggest changes to MacOS 27 are under the hood and are noticeable with faster app launch time, snappier Safari experiences, and a generally more performative system, there are also a variety of new features and capabilities to explore.
From the all new Siri AI, Siri app chatbot, Liquid Glass interface adjustments, new screen savers and wallpapers, a solution to clutter menu bar icons, powerful AI assisted Shortcuts creation, and more, read on to find some great new features in MacOS 27 Golden Gate.
1. Siri AI & Siri Chatbot
The all new Siri AI features are available throughout macOS Golden Gate. Whether it’s the new writing tools, the right-click “Ask Siri” option, or the new dedicated Siri app chatbot.
Just search for the Siri app to try out the new Siri chatbot. The same type of questions, analysis, queries, that you used ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude for, you can use the Siri app for.
You will need to join the beta test for Siri AI to gain access to these features (users in other regions, including the EU, can set their language to English to gain access to Siri AI), and after you are accepted you will have these tools available.
2. Hide & Expand a Cluttered Menu Bar
macOS Golden Gate includes a new feature that automatically hides and expands icons in a cluttered menu bar. The Mac menu bar can get quite crowded, particularly with MacBook laptops that have the goofy Notch taking up a significant portion of the screen, so this is a really nice and welcome feature.
Yes there are third party apps and tools that offer similar capabilities, but it’s always nice when something is built into the operating system.
3. Adjust Liquid Glass Effects
macOS Golden Gate includes a Liquid Glass slider to adjust transparency levels, where you can have things be fully transparent, or opaque, or anywhere in between.
You can find this in System Settings > Appearance > Liquid Glass
This, plus many other visual refinements in the operating system, aims to correct what was arguably a controversial visual change in the prior macOS Tahoe version, and it makes a big difference.
4. Create New Shortcuts with Natural Language
Apple Intelligence is now in Shortcuts in a wildly convenient way; you can now create Shortcuts and automated tasks by describing what you want the task to do in plain English.
For example, you can create a new shortcut and describe something like “Convert all of these images to JPG in 1440×900 resolution, then compress them into a ZIP file” and Shortcuts will use AI to create a shortcut that does exactly that.
This is super powerful and very convenient, give it a try. Natural language descriptions like this take the geeky guesswork
5. Enjoy the New Golden Gate Screensavers & Wallpapers
macOS Golden Gate includes a few Golden Gate Bridge-themed wallpapers and screensavers that are really quite lovely.
You can find these in System Settings > Wallpaper
These beauties will certainly make you long for or reminisce about any trips to San Francisco!
6. New Photos App Tools: Reframe, Extend, Cleanup
Photos app has three powerful new AI assisted editing tools available.
Reframe, which lets you adjust the framing of a photo.
Extend, which lets you expand a photo further than the existing frame.
Cleanup, which lets you remove unwanted elements, people, blemishes, objects, and other stuff from a photo.
You can access these powerful tools from the Photos app when you choose to “Edit” a photo.
7. Rely on Spotlight Search Again
Spotlight search works reliably again! Now you can search for apps, files, and other info, and Spotlight will find it again. Plus, Spotlight now has Siri built in, so you can issue Siri commands directly from Spotlight now too.
Just hit Command+Spacebar to access the new and improved Spotlight.
This might be funny to include as a feature, but the amount of user frustration and complaints of Spotlight in Tahoe were significant, so it’s a very welcome fix to have Spotlight search in fully working order again.
8. Enjoy a Faster & Improved MacOS Experience
Much of MacOS 27 Golden Gate improvements are under the hood, with notable improvements to all sorts of functionality in the operating system. Whether that’s improvements to system search, file search, mail search, photo search, or faster app launch times, faster Safari experiences, faster network transfer, faster AirDrop transfers, and more. MacOS 27 Golden Gate is just plain faster and more reliable than it’s predecessor Tahoe, and a worthwhile upgrade.
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What do you think of the new features in MacOS 27 Golden Gate? Do you have any favorites yourself? Any major changes or features that you really like? Share them with us in the comments!
By the way, you might have noticed some of these features overlap with some of the better new features in iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 too, and that’s pretty great since if you learn to depend on them on one device, you can probably use them on another too.
