On macOS 27 Golden Gate, Apple Intelligence is now in Shortcuts in a wildly convenient way; you can now create Shortcuts and automated tasks by describing what you want the task to do in plain English.
With Apple Intelligence, you can create a custom shortcut just by describing what you want.
• In the Shortcuts app on your Mac, click the Add button in the toolbar
• Describe in normal language what you would like the shortcut to do, for example: "Whenever I'm leaving work, calculate the driving travel time home, and text my partner the arrival time."
• The Shortcuts app creates and names a shortcut based on your input
• To test your new shortcut, click Play button
• You can describe a change or hit edit to modify the contents directly
Note: Apple Intelligence on macOS 27 is not available in all languages or regions.
macOS 27 has been released and whether you’re jumping in immediately, or waiting a bit, you might want to take a few moments to prepare your Mac for this major system software upgrade.
The big things to do are to check for system compatibility of your Mac, update your apps, make sure you have enough free storage available, and to backup your Mac. Once you’ve got those covered, you can update whenever you’d like.
• Hardware Compatibility
macOS 27 Golden Gate has a pretty broad range of hardware support, but it does drop support for some Macs. The big dividing line is chip architecture. It will run on any Apple Silicon Mac but will NOT run on any Intel Mac.
If you aren’t sure what your Mac is, you can go to the Apple menu and choose “About This Mac”. Look next to “Chip” and if you see anything like Apple M1, M2, M3, M4, Apple M5, M6, A18, you have an Apple Silicon Mac. If you see anything related to Intel or Core i5, Core i7, etc, the Mac will not be compatible.
• Free Storage
Make sure you have sufficient free storage available to be able to download and install the MacOS 27 Golden Gate update. For this, you’ll need at least 30 GB of free space on your drive to install and upgrade successfully to MacOS 27.
Launch Cocktail and perform essential system maintenance. You can also check your storage, and where to free things up by going to Apple menu > System Settings > General > Storage.
• Update Your Apps
App developers have been updating their apps to be compatible with macOS 27, so updating your apps is a good idea. Go to the App Store app, click on your Apple ID / name, then choose “Updates”, select to “Update All”.
This covers all App Store apps. Remember that if you have apps obtained directly from a developer, you will need to update those independently, often from the developer or within the app itself. Cocktail (Golden Gate Edition) is available for download from our site.
• Backup the Mac
The most important step: backup your Mac! Backing up your Mac insures that you can preserve and restore all of your data if something goes wrong, and it even allows you to easily downgrade if you decide MacOS 27 is not for you. Do not skip this step, it’s really important.
If you have not done so yet, set up and use Time Machine on Mac for backups. You will need an external hard drive for that purpose. Connect the Time Machine backup disk to the Mac, pull down the Time Machine menu item and choose “Back Up Now” to instantly start a backup of the Mac to the Time Machine disk and let the backup complete, it may take a while.
You’re now ready to install macOS 27 Golden Gate! From Apple menu, go to System Settings > General > Software Update > Upgrade Now for macOS 27. Upgrading to macOS 27 Golden Gate from Software Update is by far the simplest approach. It will install like any other system update, and reboot your Mac to finish.
Some Mac users wait for the first or second point release update to install a major new operating system version. This is reasonable as well, particularly if you’re waiting for some critical app compatibility. With all that said, if you’re currently running macOS Tahoe 26, then you will likely find macOS 27 Golden Gate to be an upgrade with better performance, and resolutions to frustrating issues with Tahoe including Spotlight not consistently working – that has been resolved in macOS 27.
Spotlight is Apple’s system-wide search feature, and it relies on a regularly updated search index of the data stored on your device. This is a local, private index that stays on your Mac and isn’t shared with Apple or your other devices. Spotlight uses this index to help you find files, folders, and apps, including a wide range of content such as documents, email, text messages, contacts, photos, music, podcasts, notes, system settings, and much more. Siri can also use content from the index when responding to your requests.
Spotlight indexes your Mac so that you can search its contents. Indexing happens when you first set up your Mac, after you install a software update or upgrade, and as data changes on your device. For example, the index updates when you install new apps that allow their content to be indexed, or you receive new email or text messages.
Depending on the amount of data on your Mac, Spotlight indexing can take hours or even days. Incremental updates after that are much faster. Indexing completes more quickly when:
• Your Mac is not in use
• Your Mac is connected to power
• Your Mac is connected to the internet via Wi-Fi or Ethernet, in case email or other data needs to be downloaded for indexing
While indexing is in progress on a Mac, you may see one an indexing progress indicator at the top of the Spotlight or Siri window that opens when you press Command–Space bar or a notification from Mail that indexing is incomplete.
If Spotlight gives unexpected search results isn’t finding a certain type of content, check Spotlight settings to find out whether that type of content is turned on for Spotlight searches. From the Apple menu , choose System Settings, then click Spotlight (or Siri & Spotlight) in the sidebar and review the settings.
Rebuilding the Spotlight index can help resolve stubborn search issues, simply launch Cocktail, go to the Spotlight tab, choose disk, make sure that indexing on this disk is enabled, click Erase and macOS will generate a new index from scratch.
Learn how to transfer photos, documents, audio, video, and other files between your Mac and a Windows computer using a Bluetooth connection.
Send files from Mac to Windows PC
• Open Settings on your Windows PC (you can launch it directly by pressing the Windows + I keys)
• Select Bluetooth & devices and make sure Bluetooth is activated
• Open System Settings on your Mac and select Bluetooth
• Scroll down to the Nearby Devices section, and you should see your Windows PC here, click the Connect button next to your PC name
• You should now get an alert on your Windows computer, click it
• Make sure the number on your PC screen matches the number on your Mac screen, then hit Yes or Allow to finish pairing
• Scroll down in your Windows PC Bluetooth settings and click Send or receive files via Bluetooth
• Click Receive files
• Open the built-in Bluetooth File Exchange app on your Mac, it's located in Applications > Utilities folder
• Select the files you want to send to your PC from the Finder interface and hit the Send button
• Choose your Windows PC from the list of devices and click Send
• Your Windows PC will start receiving the file, and after the transfer finishes, it will show a “Save the received file” window
• Click Finish to save the file in the location shown, or click Browse to select another location and save it there
Send files from Windows PC to Mac
• Launch Mac’s System Settings, click Bluetooth, and make sure it’s on
• Head to General > Sharing and ensure Bluetooth Sharing is enabled
• Open Settings on your Windows PC and select Bluetooth & devices
• Make sure Bluetooth is on, and click Add device (plus button) at the top, followed by Bluetooth
• Select your Mac, and you will get an alert on your Apple computer; make sure the numbers on your Mac and PC screens match and hit the Connect button in both places
• With the computers paired, click your Mac’s name at the top of the Bluetooth settings on your PC
• Scroll down and click Send or receive files via Bluetooth
• Click Send files
• Click your Mac on the “Select where to send your files” screen and hit Next
• Click Browse, select what you want to send from File Explorer, and then click Open, then click Next
• Hit Accept on your Mac to receive the incoming Bluetooth file transfer request
• Your PC will start sending the files to your Mac; once the transfer is successful, you’ll find these files in your Mac’s Downloads folder
Learn how to stop a Mac from automatically opening the apps, windows, and tabs from your last session after restarting, powering on or logging into your macOS user account.
If you don’t like seeing apps from previous session open automatically every time you power on or restart your Mac, here are some tips to prevent this from happening.
Untick the “Reopen windows when logging back in” box
After choosing the Restart, Shut Down, or Log Out option in the Apple menu, your Mac displays a confirmation dialog with Cancel and Restart buttons and a small tick box labeled “Reopen windows when logging back in.” Ticking this box tells macOS to automatically launch all apps that remained open when you last shut down your Mac or switched to another user. To stop this from happening, untick this box.
Hold the Shift key while opening the app
If you have multiple documents open in an app like Pages, then quit and re-open the app, it will restore documents from the previous session. This is a very convenient feature until it becomes annoying. Thankfully, you can simply hold the Shift key when opening an app to prevent it from re-opening any documents or windows from the previous session. You can also stop this behavior permanently by following the steps below:
• Open System Settings and click Desktop & Dock in the sidebar
• Turn on “Close windows when quitting an application” on the right side
Stop Safari from reopening windows and tabs from the previous session
Safari automatically reopen windows and tabs from your previous session, so you can pick up right where you left off. You may want to turn off this feature to always start with a clean slate:
• Be sure “Close windows when quitting an application” is turned on in System Settings > Desktop & Dock
• Open the Safari browser and click Safari > Settings from the top menu bar
• Select the General tab, click the menu next to “Safari opens with,” and select an option other than “All windows from last session” or “All non-private windows from last session”
Quit all apps before restart or shutdown
As an alternative, close all open apps before shutting down your Mac so there’s nothing to reopen from the previous session following a restart.
