Spotlight
In macOS 27 Golden Gate, Spotlight as such behaves similarly to how it did in Tahoe—though with, Apple claims, more relevant search suggestions. The Spotlight interface has been merged with the Siri AI interface. That is to say, what you see on screen when you invoke Spotlight (via ⌘-Space or whichever custom keyboard shortcut you set) is exactly the same as what you see when you invoke Siri (via the Siri menu bar icon), and you can treat the field in which you type either as a search term or as a prompt. Instead of the former Search, rendered in gray text in the field, it now reads Search or Ask.
As in Tahoe, either before or after you enter a search term, you can narrow the search to various categories. Move the mouse or press the down arrow key to show them; Tahoe, by contrast, used the Tab or right arrow key. You can then click a category or use the arrow keys and Return to select it. Alternatively, you can press the associated keyboard shortcut shown to access each category directly.
Here are the four categories:
- Apps (⌘-1): In this view, only apps are shown (regardless of where they’re located on your Mac). Recently used apps appear at the top, until you start typing.
- Files (⌘-2): Similarly, in this view, only files and folders appear, but that includes apps, too! Again, recent files appear at the top (below Suggestions, explained in a moment) until you start typing.
Results in Apps and Files categories include items on your iPhone, if you’ve set up iPhone Mirroring.
- Actions: (⌘-3): Actions are activities (some provided by Apple, others provided by third-party apps) that you can access directly from Spotlight without opening apps or performing additional steps.
- Clipboard (⌘-4): Spotlight can keep track of things you’ve put on your clipboard previously, including them in search results, as long as this feature is enabled (as it is by default): go to System Settings > Spotlight, scroll to the bottom, and turn Results from Clipboard on or off.
Shortcuts
The Shortcuts user interface was overhauled significantly to steer users away from manually creating shortcuts and toward its major new feature: the Apple Intelligence-powered “Describe a shortcut.” When you click the plus button on the toolbar, you now see a big “What do you want your shortcut to do?” banner.
In the “Describe a shortcut” field at the bottom, type out what you’d like your shortcut to do. Apple Intelligence then takes a first stab at it. You can try out the shortcut and, if it doesn’t work quite right, type a correction in the “Describe a change” field. With any new or existing shortcut, you can select it and click the Edit button on the toolbar to bring up the full Shortcuts editor, which has been rearranged a bit and now includes a Pinned section.
Although the existing interface for creating Automations is still there, a new method is available, too: when editing a shortcut, go to the Automation category in the right-hand sidebar and double-click an automation (such as Time of Day or Message). This adds it to the top of the shortcut so you can configure it while creating or editing a shortcut.
Shortcuts features several new systemwide actions:
- Notification: This action runs when you receive a notification from a specified app.
- Screenshot: This action runs when you save a screenshot to Photos, Files, and/or your Clipboard.
- Store Content, Get Stored Content, and Delete Stored Content: You can now store data within Shortcuts itself, rather than having to create and manage external files.
In addition, there are new actions for several Apple apps:
- Mail: There’s a new Find Message action for Mail.
- Messages: New actions for Messages include Delete Conversations, Delete Messages, Mark as Read, Open Inbox, Search in Messages, and Send Tapback.
- Photos: The new actions for Photos are Auto Enhance Photo, Delete Albums, Delete Photos, Favorite Albums, Find Albums, and Hide Photos.
- Reminders: The Reminders app has new Create Group, Create Section, Delete Groups, Delete Lists, Delete Sections, and Edit List actions.
In addition, some actions have expanded capabilities:
- Get What’s On Screen now lets you specify a data type, such as Images, Text, or Web Pages.
- If now lets you specify multiple conditions, evaluated with Any or All (much like rules in Mail). To add conditions, click the plus button in the If action.
