Macworld

Apple has released macOS 27 Golden Gate, the newest version of the Mac operating system. It includes several AI features, including Siri AI and Apple Intelligence. It also has new features in Safari, Image Playground, and Photos. And it has a ton of refinements, as well as optimized performance.

Before you install macOS 27 Golden Gate, you should back up the data on your Mac, just in case. You can use Time Machine or another method. Also, you should check if your Mac is compatible with macOS 27 as Intel Macs are completely out of the picture.

Once the installation is done, what should you do with your Mac? Here are 12 things you should try first in macOS 27. This list will get you going on the new features and refinements.

Adjust the transparency of Liquid Glass

Last year, Apple’s operating systems adopted the Liquid Glass design language. Liquid Glass wasn’t as well-received as the company would’ve liked, so in macOS 27, Liquid Glass customization options are available.

The Liquid Glass effect can be adjusted here whilst setting up your Mac.

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You can now adjust the intensity of the Liquid Glass effect to your liking right from the setup stage. And if you’re not satisfied with your choice, you can change it later: this is easily done in the Appearance system settings, where you’ll find a nice easter egg.

Edit your favorite photos

For some time now, the Photos’ Clean Up tool can remove distracting elements from photos with varying degrees of success. Compared to professional software, Photos did have some significant drawbacks. But now, with the help of the improved Apple Intelligence, you can achieve almost professional results. Simply select an object you want to remove from the image and marvel at the result. You can also adjust the angle of a scene or extend the image. The latter, however, still falls significantly short of Photoshop’s generative filling; it simply extends the image with a blurred border.

Try Visual Intelligence

While Visual Intelligence is more prominent on an iPhone, it’s available in macOS 27. You can test what it’s capable of using your own photos, images from the web or screenshots. Right-click an image and select Ask Siri. The answer isn’t always correct, but Apple’s AI is constantly learning.

You’ll need to double-check Apple’s Visual Intelligence, since it’s not always correct.

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Play with Image Playground

Almost two years ago, Apple unveiled its image-generation tool, Image Playground, but it didn’t make much of an impression. You could turn people into superheroes using images from your own media library, or place them in fantasy landscapes with all sorts of accessories. But Apple decided not to let users create photorealistic images, so the illustrated results were not really convincing.

With the improved AI in macOS 27 Golden Gate, Image Playground is improved and capable of generating photorealistic images. You can use natural language or, as I did, several lines from my song “Cold Drink Heart.” The image below illustrates the first two verses from the song.

I asked Image Playground to make an image from the following lyrics: Time by time I see her walking by / Can’t avoid it, I’m gonna cry / and then my heart misses a beat / and I got swept from my feet / my blood pressure is on the rise / like a rocket in disguise.

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Do have a go with Image Playgrounds yourself, but don’t be surprised if the software refuses to let celebrities appear in the scenes you sketch. I’d love to show you a picture here of Lionel Messi in a Bayern Munich kit, but the AI won’t have any of it.

Speak to Siri

Instead of poking around you Mac with your cursor, you can simply ask the new Siri what you’ve recently noted down about a particular topic. Or which specific person, landscape or object you’ve photographed. Siri AI searches your Mac and presents the results. You don’t need to switch to an app, find the search box, and type in a term. It can all be done in one go via a voice command.

Try Siri AI with Spotlight A quick answer in Spotlight to the question of the square root of three. A few more decimal places would have been nice.

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Spotlight and Siri have become fully integrated in macOS 27 Golden Gate. The Mac’s system-wide search is now semantic, which means it no longer just searches file names or for terms within content, but understands context in such a way that you can ask a question in natural language and get an answer directly in Spotlight. You don’t need to open a separate app to get an answer from the internet.

This requires a newly created index, which can take some time. Your Mac doesn’t simply create a flat index as before, but organizes your files and their contents into vectors, a numerical representation of a word, pixel or other data point. Apple already initiated the re-indexing process with the update to macOS 26.6. If you missed this update, you’ll now have to wait until the system has finished the job. You can speed up the process a little by leaving your Mac switched on overnight and plugged into the charger, if it’s a portable computer.

A new Siri app that works like an AI chatbot is included in macOS 27.

Apple

Use the Siri app

Chatbots such as OpenAI, Claude, and Gemini have become popular resources. Apple now has a Siri app that works a lot like those chatbots. What’s helpful is that it keeps a log of your queries, which you could refer back to at a later date. Bear in mind that if you resume a chat with Siri, the AI does not pick up where you left off, but instead reads through all the questions and answers again in full and evaluates them to formulate the next response.

Group tabs in Safari

Tabs are incredibly handy, especially in a browser. But it’s all too easy to lose track of things when you’ve got a dozen or two tabs open. The tab groups offered by Safari in macOS 12 Monterey haven’t always been much help. That’s changing with macOS 27 Golden Gate: Apple Intelligence automatically organizes tabs into thematic groups.

Test ‘Notify Me’ in Safari

You can be notified of every significant change on the websites that matter most to you, as often as every hour. If you want to track the price of a particular product on a shopping site, you could configure Safari to send you a daily update. You can also set it to track changes on a weekly or monthly basis.

To do this, go to the website in question and click on the icon with the three lines on the left of the address bar, then click Notify Me. You can even use natural language to tell Siri AI exactly what you want to keep an eye on.

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Check your passwords and have them changed

Perhaps there an insecure password lurking somewhere in your Keychain or the Passwords app. Before, when a compromised passwords was flagged, you had to manage it all yourself. Now, Siri AI can change your passwords for you, replacing insecure ones with secure ones. This feature may not be available until a macOS 27 update.

Search your Mail boxes

Are you one of those users who never tidy up your inbox in Mail because you rely on the search function? You’ll no doubt have noticed time and again over the past few years that this strategy has its limitations and that you simply can’t find some emails anymore, even though you’re sure you didn’t delete them.

With macOS 27 Golden Gate, the new email search, promises a better overview when organizing the results. However, you may have to wait quite some time for Mail on macOS 27 Golden Gate to rebuild the search index before you can take advantage of the new search.

Share photo albums with non-Mac users

Go to the Photos app and share an album with someone who doesn’t have a Mac. This was already possible before, but macOS 27 Golden Gate makes it easier: the Photos app in iCloud has a new interface that users of Android smartphones or Windows PCs can access without having to compromise on image quality.