macOS 27 Golden Gate: Liquid Glass refinement, better performance, Siri AI

Contents

At today's WWDC 2026 keynote, Apple announced the next version of macOS. Apple continues to market the system with a nickname: macOS 27 is called Golden Gate, a reference to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

Liquid Glass – The Second Round

Apple has revised the Liquid Glass interface introduced with macOS 26. The glassy basic idea remains. Apple has listened to user feedback and improved transparency effects and contrasts, for example in buttons, to increase readability, which was heavily criticized in Tahoe.

Specifically, macOS 27, like iOS and iPadOS 27, offers a slider to continuously adjust the transparency and glassiness of Liquid Glass elements. The sidebar now extends to the edge of the window again, and the toolbar gets a background again, so that buttons don't just float lost over document content. The corner radius should be uniform across all apps, even for programs not yet adapted. Apple has also revised the icons, they should appear sharper.

Performance, Stability, and Spotlight

Several pre-reports describe macOS 27 as a “Snow Leopard”-like update – in reference to Mac OS X 10.6 from 2009, which appeared without major new features but with massive stability improvements. Apple has improved performance across all systems. Apps are said to start 30 percent faster, and content in the Photos app, for example, is said to appear up to 70 percent faster than before. Animations should run more smoothly, and a revised CPU scheduler should ensure less CPU load and smoother animations. Apple claims to have accelerated AirDrop transfers by 80 percent.

For Spotlight, Apple promises faster display of search results thanks to a new indexing method and more relevant suggestions thanks to a new ranking algorithm. This should also affect Mail, Photos, and other apps.

Apple Intelligence and a New Siri AI

Apple has fundamentally revised Apple Intelligence – including “Siri AI”. In collaboration with Google and Gemini models, Apple Intelligence features and Siri are intended to become more powerful. With this, Apple also wants to fulfill the promise from WWDC 2024: Siri AI should incorporate the user's personal context, understand screen content, and be able to perform actions across app boundaries. Siri AI will be released later this year as a standalone app in a beta version. For macOS, it should be available directly in the EU, unlike iOS and iPad.

The new local foundation models are multimodal and thus understand different content types simultaneously. Apple continues to combine local models with privacy-friendly cloud models. They drive various functions. Image Playground, for example, is said to generate significantly better images with them. The app has also become more flexible, allowing users to mark and further edit areas. Shortcuts can also soon be created with natural language via AI. Visual Intelligence comes to the Mac and can analyze images and excerpts there.

App Actions allow other programs to be controlled by AI, presumably similar to the MCP protocol. Further details on the AI innovations can be found in the article on Apple Intelligence and Siri AI.

More AI Editing in the Photos App

Based on the new AI models, the Photos app gets more and improved editing functions. The Clean-Up tool for removing distracting objects is said to deliver more realistic results and handle larger image areas. The new Extend function expands the background of an image, a feature that programs like Photoshop have offered for a long time. “Spatial Framing” changes the perspective, allowing interactive adjustment.

Safari with Automatic Tab Organization and Price Alerts

Safari gets an AI-powered tab management. It sorts open tabs thematically into groups. The browser can also monitor pages for changes and notify about price changes, for example. To do this, you tell the browser what change you are waiting for.

With “Describe an Extension”, you create a Safari extension using natural language. Apple cites a function that collects and saves recipes from websites as an example. Instead of manually changing passwords classified as compromised, Apple's AI will take over this task in the future.

Shared iCloud albums can be shared much more easily via the web with Android and Windows users, who can now also contribute their own pictures. You can also provide photos in full resolution.

Child Protection Features and Screen Time

Regarding child protection, Apple states that it has developed a guide for children's media consumption with pediatricians and educational experts, which is reflected in numerous new features. Parents can specify in detail when their children can use which apps and websites and with whom they can communicate – supplemented by a function that allows children to specifically request access to individual pages. The existing nudity filter is extended to include depictions of violence. Apple has completely revised Screen Time and it should be much harder to circumvent. In the future, time windows can be defined per app category, e.g., only school apps in the morning and games on weekends. New interfaces should also allow third-party apps to align their content with the age of the users. Further details on the child protection features can be found in the report on iOS 27.

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Kinderschutz in den neuen Systemen (7 Bilder)

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Accessibility

In May 2026, Apple had already announced several innovations for accessibility features in advance. VoiceOver and Magnifier will use Apple Intelligence for more detailed image descriptions; the Reader for accessibility features should also handle more complex content, including columns, images, and tables. Apple also plans to integrate AI summaries and a translation function. Videos without subtitles will be automatically provided with on-device generated subtitles by macOS – initially only in English in the US and Canada. In addition, there will be more reliable pairing for hearing aids and support for the Sony Access Controller as a freely configurable game controller on the Mac.

Other Changes

• Higher-resolution Flyover animation in Apple Maps.
• macOS supports ultra-wide displays with resolutions like 5K at 120 Hz.
• For multi-display operation, macOS should more reliably remember the arrangement of the displays.
• In Podcasts, you can seamlessly switch between video and pure audio playback.
• Many apps now also support Pull-to-Refresh on Mac to update content by pulling down.
• The “General” system settings list all apps that will no longer function from macOS 28 onwards.
• System services such as MDM and software updates will require at least TLS 1.2 from macOS 27 onwards.

Availability

Developers can download the beta version of macOS 27 Golden Gate immediately. The first public beta for interested end-users will follow in July. The final version of the operating system is expected to be released in the fall, as usual.

Hardware Requirements: Final End for Intel

macOS 27 marks the end of an era: it is the first macOS version that runs exclusively on Apple Silicon Macs. Apple had already announced the end of the x86 architecture at WWDC 2025 and described macOS 26 Tahoe as the last version for Intel hardware.

The following Intel machines, still compatible with Tahoe, are therefore no longer supported:

• iMac 5K 2020
• Mac Pro 2019
• MacBook Pro 16″ from 2019
• MacBook Pro 13″ from 2020 with four Thunderbolt 3 ports

For these devices, based on experience, Apple will provide security updates for another two to three years within the scope of macOS 26.

macOS 27 runs on all Apple Silicon Macs.

(wre)