Apple’s latest version of its Mac operating system officially rolled out on September 14. MacOS 27 Golden Gate was announced at WWDC in June, but it’s now available to download right on your Mac—assuming you have a compatible one.
The launch of Siri AI is the huge new feature, which is Apple’s first serious attempt to integrate AI capabilities deeply into macOS. I’ve been playing around with the software update for months, and now it’s available for anyone to try out.
Updated September 2026: Added some hands-on impressions now that macOS 27 is officially out in the world.
Is Your Mac Compatible With macOS Golden Gate?
The new update, macOS 27 Golden Gate, is only compatible with Apple Silicon Macs. Last year, Apple announced that macOS 26 Tahoe would be the last update to support Intel-powered Macs. Here’s the full list of supported devices:
Some of the more advanced Apple Intelligence features, such as the improved Voice Mode, are exclusive to newer Macs. Those more advanced modes require an M3 Mac or newer with at least 12 GB of RAM. That rules out the MacBook Neo and lots of MacBook Airs from before 2024.
One more caveat: Siri AI is currently English-only and will not be immediately available in the EU or China due to regulatory concerns.
How to Install macOS 27 Golden Gate
The MacOS Golden Gate beta has been available since July, but the official release is now available to download and safe to install on your Mac if you want to try out the new features.
Like always, just head over to System Settings > General > Software Update. From there, you should see macOS Golden Gate 27 available, with the option to Update Now or Update Tonight.
Meet the New Siri
Siri on Mac never made a lot of sense, and I can’t imagine it has ever been used much. But this new version of the chatbot, known as Siri AI, looks a bit more tailored for this new version of macOS Golden Gate. It carries over a lot of the new features that the iOS and iPadOS versions have, including a dedicated app, screen awareness, automatic proofreading, personal context, and the improved, customizable voice experience. Most importantly, the new Apple Foundation Models that Siri runs on are based on Google Gemini, giving it highly improved natural language processing as well as the latest computer vision and image-generation models.
I could see a lot of Mac users, especially those who are weary (or afraid) of going to ChatGPT.com, getting their first real exposure to modern AI chatbots through Siri AI. Unfortunately, it’s currently still in Beta. It’s turned off by default, and in Settings, it states that Siri AI is “being rolled out gradually.” That’s a shame considering how long we’ve been waiting for it, but Apple clearly wants to release this to the wider public as carefully as possible. Reports online indicate that some people were clearing the waitlist early on within minutes. I was not that lucky, however, and have been waiting for almost an entire day at the time of writing. Apple hasn’t indicated how extensive the waitlist is or how long it will take to come out of beta.
Once you do have access, though, Siri should now be systemwide. It can be pulled up from anywhere on the desktop, where it’s accessible from a simple right click in the context window. One example of how this might work is with documents. In Finder, you can select a few files and then right click, then click on Siri AI to start prompting right in the Siri AI app. It’s also being built into Spotlight. Right now, Spotlight is primarily just for finding things on your computer. But now Apple says that if you ask it a question that’s more suited for Siri, it’ll automatically answer using Siri AI and open a chat window so you can continue the Siri conversation. Siri also has Visual Intelligence on the Mac. If you take a screenshot, Siri can be immediately pulled up and prompted to answer questions about or take action on what’s in that image.
For more information on how Siri AI works across other platforms, check out our full breakdown of everything you can do with the new app.
Apple Intelligence Apps
Photograph: Luke Larsen
The broader rollout of this new version of Siri is also happening across a variety of first-party Apple apps. Safari is getting the biggest update. It’s had tab groups since 2021, but browser tabs have always had to be organized and managed manually. Now, there’s something called Topics in Safari, which feels like a smarter way to organize tabs. Using AI, Safari will automatically combine tabs together into topics, which can then be closed out or saved for later as a tab group.
