Did you know that you can turn off Apple Intelligence features like Siri AI, summarization features, and more on macOS 27 Golden Gate?
For more information on parental controls, see Apple Devices for Kids and Families.
Siri
• You will need to enable Screen Time to block Siri; go to System Settings > Screen Time > Contents & Privacy
• Turn off the Contents & Privacy switch at the top of the screen
• Click Siri
• Change Siri to Siri Classic
• Go through the list of Capabilities and turn each one off
Notifications
• Go to System Settings > Notifications
• Turn off the Summarize notifications
Messages
• Launch Messages
• Go to Settings > General
• Turn off Summarize Messages
Mail
• Launch Mail.
• Go to Settings > Viewing
• Turn off Summarize Message Previews
• Go to Settings > Composing
• Turn off Personalize Smart Replies
• Go to the View menu and make sure Show Mail Categories is not checked
Journal
• Launch Journal
• Go to Settings > General
• Turn off Get Writing Prompts
Finder & other apps
• In Finder, go to Finder > Settings
• Uncheck Suggest file names
Siri & other apps
• Go to System Settings > Siri.
• Click on App Access.
• Click on each app and…
• Turn off Learn from this application.
• Turn off Show Siri Suggestions in application, if shown
• Repeat for each app in the list
Note: In System Settings > Privacy & Security, there is an Apple Intelligence Report. We recommend keeping this setting turned on so that you can verify that Apple Intelligence is truly not functioning.
Learn how to set your Mac to offload large macOS apps and games directly onto an external flash drive, SSD, or hard disk if internal storage is limited.
Did you know that you can install App Store apps larger than 1 GB directly onto an external drive? This feature is a much-needed, especially since Apple sells MacBook Neo with just 256 GB of base storage.
To install Mac apps and games on an external storage device:
• Connect the external storage device to your Mac
• Make sure the disk is in Apple’s APFS format
If it isn’t, you can control-click or right-click on the drive name on the desktop and choose Erase Disk > APFS (Apple File System) > Erase. Note that formatting deletes everything from the disk, so be sure to back up important files before proceeding. APFS drives have also limited usability on non-Apple platforms like Windows PC and Android.
• With the external drive formatted to APFS and connected to your Mac, open the App Store and click App Store > Settings from the top menu bar
• Check the box for “Download and install large apps to a separate disk.”, after that, click the drop-down menu and select the external drive
After instructing the App Store to download its larger files to the chosen external storage device, locate an app or game that requires more than 1GB of space and click the Get, download arrow button. Mac apps bigger than 1GB include Microsoft Word (1.3 GB), Adobe Lightroom (1.6 GB), iMovie (3.5 GB), Civilization VI (15.4 GB), Tomb Raider (12.3 GB), etc. These apps will now install directly on the chosen disk.
Safari on Mac has supported extensions since version 5, which was released in 2010, but despite years of support, the Safari Extensions store is a lot more limited than the Chrome Web Store. To address this, Apple now lets you create your own extensions based on your needs, without compromising your privacy. You can simply describe what you want, and Apple Intelligence will likely build a working Safari extension just for you in a couple of minutes.
Just like extensions you download from the App Store, the ones you create will also be compatible with macOS, iOS, and iPadOS. Plus, they automatically sync via iCloud on all devices where you have signed in with the same Apple Account.
Create Safari extensions on Mac:
• Upgrade your Mac to macOS 27 Golden Gate and make sure new Siri (and by extension, Apple Intelligence) is set up
• Open Safari and visit a website
• Click the three-line menu icon on the left side of the address bar as shown in the screenshot below, and select Describe Extension
• Think of what you want the extension to do; what new feature or improvements you want to add to Safari, or pick a suggested idea from these categories: Boost Productivity, Improve Focus, Get Creative, and Design & Develop
For example, tell Apple Intelligence to build an extension that changes the page background from black to white. Describe that in the box in simple words:
"Build me an extension that changes the page background from black to white."
and click Next.
Safari will search if there is an existing extension on the App Store that already does what you want. In case there are none (which is the case in most cases), it will say ‘No App Store Results. Create an extension to get started.’ Click the Create button.
• Wait for Apple’s AI to build it; you’ll see a ‘Creating Extension…’ status in the upper left corner of the screen
• Once the extension is created, click the ‘Try’ button to give it a spin
• After clicking ‘Try,’ you’ll likely have to click the extension icon again at the top and allow it to run
• If the extension works as you asked, then there is nothing left to do, but if not, you can tweak it: click Edit or View and then describe the change
• Finally, click Save to update the extension
You can manage this extension (Mac and iOS) the same way you can other third-party ones.
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.
