macOS 27 Golden Gate: Release Date and Every New Feature

macOS 27, codenamed Golden Gate after the strait connecting San Francisco Bay to the Pacific, ships Monday, September 14 — alongside iOS 27 and the rest of Apple's fall software lineup announced at the September 9 keynote. It's a significant release for one structural reason above all: it's the first version of macOS to run exclusively on Apple Silicon, dropping Intel Mac support entirely, and the last version with full Rosetta 2 functionality.

Siri AI Comes to the Mac

Golden Gate gets the same rebuilt Siri AI as iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 — conversational, with access to personal and on-screen context, web search, and the ability to take actions across apps. The most capable on-device model requires an M3 chip or later with at least 12GB of unified memory; Apple Intelligence more broadly works across all Apple Silicon Macs, just with a lighter feature set on older or lower-memory configurations.

Safari, Messages, and Mail

Safari gains automatic tab grouping, a "Notify Me" feature that alerts you when a webpage changes, AI-generated browser extensions, and general speed improvements. Messages and Mail both get a personalized Smart Reply feature and better search. Apple Intelligence also adds systemwide proofreading, smarter writing tools, improved dictation, and automatic file and folder naming.

Liquid Glass, Revisited

A year after introducing Liquid Glass, Apple is refining it rather than replacing it. A new slider lets users control how translucent Liquid Glass elements appear — from maximum translucency to a more opaque, tinted look for better legibility — and the material now diffuses complex background content more effectively. Window design gets several small but noticeable reversals and refinements: consistent window border shapes across apps (undoing a change from last year's macOS Tahoe), redesigned Aqua-style traffic-light buttons, and the return of the glove-shaped cursor icon from versions before Tahoe. Pull-to-refresh also arrives in Safari, Mail, News, Podcasts, and Calendar.

Gaming: Game Porting Toolkit 4

Apple is continuing its push into Mac gaming with Game Porting Toolkit 4, aimed at making it easier for developers to bring Windows games to macOS.

Feature details above are drawn from Apple's own announcement and developer documentation. If you're running an Intel Mac, this is the last macOS version you'll be able to upgrade to going forward.