Overview
- Apple released the first public beta of macOS 27 Golden Gate, which launched Monday, and non-developers can enroll on Apple's beta site and enable the update in System Settings > General > Software Update.
- Golden Gate brings Apple Intelligence to the Mac with a dedicated Siri app, ongoing Siri conversations, web search, access to personal data for contextual answers, Visual Intelligence that reads the screen, and a 'Write with Siri' text-generation and editing tool.
- The update requires Apple silicon only, with Intel Macs unsupported, and several advanced AI features are gated to newer, higher‑end Apple silicon models and may need large on‑device model downloads or higher iCloud tiers.
- macOS 27 also introduces visible UI changes—an adjustable Liquid Glass transparency slider, uniform toolbars, less rounded window corners, and edge-to-edge sidebars—while removing legacy AFP/Time Capsule support for Time Machine backups.
- Users should back up data before installing because betas can be unstable; Apple has run developer-only betas since WWDC and plans a general public release in the fall, so the public beta is for testing rather than final use.