With each new release of macOS, Apple adds, removes, relocates, and renames a bunch of controls in System Settings. macOS 27 Golden Gate is no different, although the changes from Tahoe are quite minor.

To open System Settings, click its Dock icon, double-click System Settings in the Applications folder, or choose Apple menu > System Settings.

As always, it can be difficult to locate a particular setting among the hundreds in System Settings. If you happen to know where a setting is, you can select a category in the sidebar on the left and then navigate to the desired spot on the right. If not, your best bet is to use the Search field, which nearly always shows you what you’re looking for—even if you don’t know the exact name of a feature or setting.

You can see an alphabetical list of all the panes on the View menu; choose a pane to go directly to it.

What follows is what changed between Tahoe and macOS 27, pane by pane, in the order they appear in the sidebar. The Siri pane changed most of all and is covered separately.

Battery settings

Where Tahoe had a Low Power Mode pop-up menu with options Only on Battery, Only on Power Adapter, Never, or Always, macOS 27 instead has two pop-up menus, one for “On battery” and the other for “On power adapter.” For each one, you can choose Automatic, Low Power, or High Power.

General settings

In the AutoFill & Passwords category, there’s a new “AutoFill from” switch, with entries indicating which app(s) can be used to supply AutoFill data. By default, Passwords is the only option (turned on by default), but if you have one or more third-party password managers, they may also appear here.

Accessibility settings

The following categories of Accessibility settings have changes:

• Display: There’s a new “Show borders” switch, which adds borders around toolbar controls, Search fields, and various other interface items to more clearly distinguish their boundaries; this replaces and significantly improves on the previous setting “Show toolbar button shapes.”
• Subtitles and Captioning: This category, which replaces Captions, adds three new controls to fine-tune when and where subtitles/captions appear: “Show when muted,” “Show on skip back,” and “Apply across apps.”

Menu Bar settings

A new “Show suggestions in Control Gallery” switch lets macOS display suggestions when you click Add Controls. Turn it off to remove the suggestions.

Wallpaper settings

As usual, macOS 27 features new static and dynamic wallpapers, and a new screen saver. You’ll never guess which bridge appears in the new images.

Lock Screen settings

A new “Show user name and photo” switch is on by default, giving you the same behavior seen in Tahoe and earlier. But if you turn it off, usernames and photos no longer appear when your Mac is locked, which might be better for privacy in settings where a Mac may be visible to the public.

Keyboard settings

The “Auto-punctuation” switch under Dictation is gone, presumably because automatic punctuation is always on and, according to Apple, greatly improved in macOS 27.

macOS 27 Golden Gate expands the existing Family features parents and guardians can use to restrict their kids’ screen usage, with an emphasis on safety. (You must first enable a Family account and add family members in System Settings > Family.) These new features require that both the parents’ and kids’ devices are running iOS 27, iPadOS 27 or macOS 27 or later; if you haven’t already done so, a message at the top of the Family setting pane reminds you.

These features are described generally rather than step by step, because testing them requires a second device signed in to a child account.

Beyond those features, the Family pane offers a simplified interface that lets parents review their kids’ screen usage time, pause device use, temporarily lift restrictions, or change a schedule with just a few clicks.

Grant per-website browsing permission

For years, families have been able to use the Ask to Buy feature, in which children must have an adult’s explicit approval to purchase apps from the App Store. In macOS 27, this concept expands to include websites. If you enable Ask to Browse for a child, each visit to a website that’s not already approved pops up an Ask to Browse message on the child’s device. If the child requests permission, the parent or guardian sees a request in Messages showing the website in question, along with Approve and Decline buttons.

Ask to Browse works in Safari and other WebKit browsers, but not in Firefox or Chromium-based browsers, which means that any child who can figure out how to download an alternative browser can bypass this feature with trivial ease.

Enforce Communication Safety

Communication Safety is an existing feature that, if enabled, warns children before displaying nude images in apps such as FaceTime and Messages, whether those images are incoming or outgoing. macOS 27 expands this to block violent or gory images, giving the child a way to end the conversation without seeing the objectionable material.

Set time allowances and schedules

Parents now have detailed controls available for restricting when, and for how long, children can use certain types of apps (including games and social media apps). You can, for example, restrict your child to playing games for just an hour a day, or set up a schedule with fine-grained controls, such as “you can use apps A, B, and C before or after school, but only D or E while at school, and F and G only in the evenings.”

At the same time, Apple has given notice that a few features are on their way out: they’re still in macOS 27 Golden Gate, but will no longer be present in macOS 28 next year.

Rosetta

First is Rosetta, the technology that enables Macs with Apple silicon to seamlessly run apps designed to work only on Intel processors. It has been around since macOS 11 Big Sur, but now that the transition to Apple silicon is complete and macOS 27 no longer supports any Intel-based Macs, Rosetta’s days are numbered. Although any apps you have that were designed for Intel processors should still work in macOS 27, you will continue to see the warning messages that started appearing partway through Tahoe’s life cycle.

Technically, it’s Rosetta 2, as Apple had a previous emulation technology called Rosetta. However, Apple’s documentation omits the 2 to refer to this second version.

Translation: you have about a year to obtain a new version of the app designed for Apple silicon (if the developer releases one) or find an alternative. Otherwise, if you depend on that app, you may have to stay on macOS 27 for quite a while.

You can start making the transition from any remaining Intel-based apps now by going to System Settings > General > About and clicking Details under the macOS section. This shows a list of apps and some components on your Mac that have Intel-only code, showing those you used in the last year first.

The built-in tool may not find all the agents, daemons, command-line programs, and other bits and bobs you’ve installed over the years. For that, you should turn to third-party tools that work in Tahoe (and some earlier versions of macOS), like iMazing’s Silicon (free), St. Clair Software’s Go64 (free), and bzwrd’s more elaborate Rosetta Check ($6.99/€6.99 one-time fee).

DVD Player and encrypted HFS+ drives

Similarly, Apple has removed the DVDPlayback framework, which likely means the DVD Player app, which is still present in macOS 27, will be gone in macOS 28.

And, any drives formatted using the encrypted Mac OS Extended (HFS+) format won’t work in macOS 28. If you have such a drive, you’ll want to back it up, reformat it as APFS, and then copy your data back before macOS 28 rolls around in late 2027.

If you’re already running Tahoe, that’s all you need to know for now; the next step is checking your Mac for compatibility. If your Mac is still using an older operating system, there are changes in the past few releases you may not be fully prepared for.

Even if you diligently followed every instruction, you might encounter problems while upgrading. I can’t anticipate every difficulty you may have (or provide solutions in every case), but here are two of the most likely issues and how to deal with them.

When the installation volume can’t be selected

If you run the macOS 27 Golden Gate installer, click Show All Disks when asked to choose a destination, and find that the volume on which you want to install macOS 27 isn’t available, chances are excellent that if you click the volume in question, the installer will usually tell you why it can’t be used and explain how to fix that problem.

When the Mac won’t start up

Following installation, if your machine will not start up under macOS 27 at all, if it gets stuck on a gray or black screen for more than about five minutes, or if you experience a kernel panic upon the first restart, try these steps in order until you are able to start up normally:

1. Force a shutdown and restart: Press and hold the power button for about 10 seconds until your Mac shuts down. Then press it again and wait for it to restart. You should give it plenty of time, as it may be performing a lot of disk integrity operations quietly underneath that black screen—again, five minutes is not unreasonable.
2. Disconnect non-essential USB devices: If your Mac gets stuck on a gray screen and won’t finish booting, try this:
   • Press and hold the power button for about 10 seconds until your Mac shuts down.
   • Disconnect all USB cables from your Mac except any that go to a keyboard, mouse, or other pointing device.
   • Press the power button again and wait for your Mac to start. If it starts normally, you can then reconnect your USB devices. If it’s still stuck after five minutes or so—or if it starts but then you experience a kernel panic—move on to the next step.
3. Try safe mode: Safe mode disables some third-party software and checks your disk for certain types of errors.

To enter safe mode, choose Apple menu > Shut Down and wait until the Mac has fully shut down. Then press and hold the power button until you see “Loading startup options” on the screen. When the Options icon appears, select your startup disk, hold down the Shift key, click Continue in Safe Mode, and then release the Shift key.

If macOS 27 starts up normally after a safe boot, a third-party extension or startup item may be the culprit. Check in /Library/LaunchAgents, /Library/LaunchDaemons, and ~/Library/LaunchAgents for third-party items that haven’t been updated recently (older items are more likely to have compatibility problems).

If you find any that you explicitly recognize and suspect, look for an uninstaller from the developer, and if there is one, use it. If not, consult the documentation that came with the software, or the developer’s website, for removal instructions.

Restart and see whether the problem is still gone. If so, reinstall the uninstalled items one at a time, restarting after each one, until you find the culprit or you’ve installed new copies of them all and your Mac is still working well.

4. Try recovery mode: You can boot into recovery mode by shutting your Mac down and then pressing and holding the power button until you see “Loading startup options” on the screen; when the Options icon appears, click it and then click Continue. A few moments later, you’ll see a macOS Utilities window; that means you’re using recovery mode.

Once in recovery mode, select Disk Utility and click Continue. When it opens, select the problematic macOS 27 volume in the sidebar, click First Aid, and follow the prompts to repair any problems that may have appeared on your macOS 27 volume. Choose Disk Utility > Quit Disk Utility to return to the macOS Utilities window. Then choose Apple menu > Restart.

5. Remove any nonessential hardware: Try restarting with only your Apple-supplied keyboard, mouse, and display attached, and (if you have a Mac Pro) without any third-party PCI or video cards. If this works, check for driver updates, and then reattach the devices one at a time, restarting after each one.
6. Reinstall macOS 27: If you still can’t start your Mac, consider reinstalling macOS 27. Perform a clean install, omitting items in the Applications category when you work your way through the file transfer portion of the installation to eliminate any possibility of software conflicts. (You can add those items later using Migration Assistant.)

In most cases, these steps will lead to a happy macOS 27 installation.

In all likelihood, your experience using macOS 27 Golden Gate will be just fine, and if you’re already using Sequoia, the odds are even more in your favor. However, if you find yourself with an intractable problem that the troubleshooting steps don’t help with and your only choice is to revert to your previous version of macOS, it is possible—though not convenient—as long as you have a full backup.

macOS has no downgrade mechanism as such. All you can do is erase your disk—yes, you really do have to erase the whole thing—and then either restore the whole thing from a bootable duplicate or reinstall your older version of macOS and then separately migrate or restore the data from a data-only duplicate or a Time Machine backup. To erase your disk, you have to start from another volume—the logical options here are a bootable installer for your old version of macOS (see how to make one) or a bootable duplicate. For this purpose, recovery mode won’t work, for the reasons set out at the end of this article.

If you have to downgrade to, say, Tahoe, and you don’t have a bootable duplicate or a bootable installer volume, you’re not necessarily out of luck. While running macOS 27, you can still download the Tahoe installer and use it to create a bootable Tahoe installer volume. The same goes for older versions of macOS.

The process

1. Start up from another volume. To do this, attach the drive containing the other startup volume, go to System Settings > General > Startup Disk, select that volume, and restart your Mac.
2. Run Disk Utility and erase the entire disk, both the system and Data volumes, containing macOS 27:
   a. Choose View > Show All Devices.
   b. Select the topmost icon for the external drive in the list on the left.
   c. Click Erase.
   d. Fill in a name for the new volume, and make sure Format is set to APFS and Scheme is set to GUID Partition Map.
   e. Click Erase.
   f. When the Done button appears, click it. You’ll then have a new volume with the name you entered in step d.
3. Reinstall your old version of macOS. If you already have the installer on your boot volume, you can simply run it; if not, you may have to download it from Apple first using Terminal.
4. Using Migration Assistant at the end of the installation, restore your data from your backup—whether that’s a data-only duplicate or a Time Machine backup—following the Migration Assistant instructions.

Why recovery mode won’t let you downgrade

Even though you can do lots of things after starting in recovery mode—including reinstalling macOS—you probably can’t use recovery mode to downgrade to your old version because recovery mode doesn’t let you install arbitrary previous versions of macOS. Your only option is the most recent version of macOS that will run on your computer: probably not what you need.

In case you were thinking you can restore from a Time Machine backup in recovery mode and use that to get back to your older system…sorry, but no. Although Time Machine used to back up your full startup volume, ever since Big Sur, it backs up only your Data volume, not macOS itself. That’s why a Time Machine backup alone can’t restore an older version of macOS.

Setup Assistant runs at the end of the installation, whether you upgraded in place or installed clean. It looks like a continuation of the installer and never shows its own name, which is why the screens it puts in front of you can feel like part of macOS 27 Golden Gate itself.

After an in-place upgrade

What happens next depends on how your Mac was previously set up:

• If you had Automatic Login turned on previously, macOS 27 should log you in automatically.
• If Automatic Login was off, your entire screen becomes a login screen. Select (or enter) your username if necessary, enter your password, and press Return to log in. This initial login process may take longer than usual, so be prepared to wait a few minutes before the login screen disappears.

The first time you use macOS 27, the installer’s Setup Assistant app runs, although you won’t see that name; if it appears at all, it looks like a continuation of the installer itself. Setup Assistant may display one or more screens that ask you to make various setup choices.

If you happen to be installing macOS 27 onto an external drive connected to a Mac with a Touch ID sensor, you may see an additional screen here prompting you to set up Touch ID (again).

One choice you’ll see is a Liquid Glass slider, which lets you adjust the transparency for some Liquid Glass interface elements. Set this however you like. (I prefer all the way to the right, the most heavily tinted—or as little transparency as possible.) You can change this later in System Settings; see how to reduce Liquid Glass.

Depending on which version of macOS you’re upgrading from and your previous settings, you may also see one or more additional screens. Those include (not necessarily in this order):

• Sign in with Your Apple Account: Even if you were signed in to iCloud in your previous version of macOS, this screen may prompt you to sign in again. Depending on the circumstances, you may be asked only for your password, or for both your Apple Account username and password. If you don’t want to enter an Apple Account username—and are willing to forgo all iCloud features for the present—select Set Up Later, click Continue, and then click Skip again to confirm. (You can enter this information later, in System Settings > Apple Account.)
• Terms and Conditions: Setup Assistant wants to be sure that you’ve consented to a bunch of additional legalese, so it may invite you to read, study, and agree to one or more statements, such as “macOS Software License Agreement” or “Game Center Terms and Conditions.” Handle these however you want; I’ve found that my lawyer enjoys chatting with me about each paragraph of such agreements in detail (at his usual hourly rates).
• Enable Location Services: If you hadn’t previously enabled Location Services (which is used for iCloud’s Find My Mac feature, Maps, Spotlight suggestions, and numerous other things), a dialog may appear asking whether you’d like to do so. Check “Enable location services on this Mac” if you like (if you leave this disabled, you can enable the setting later in System Settings > Privacy & Security > Privacy > Location Services), or click the “About Location Services & Privacy” link to learn more.
• Analytics: macOS 27 can automatically send diagnostic and usage data to Apple and/or third-party developers to help them track down the causes of crashes and other bugs you may encounter. This information is anonymous and doesn’t contain personal data.

If you want to send this troubleshooting data in the event that a problem occurs, select Send Diagnostics & Usage Data to Apple. With that selected, you may also select Share Crash Data with App Developers. (You can’t share crash data with app developers unless you also share diagnostic data with Apple.)

• Siri: You may see a Siri screen that simply reminds you that you can now say “Siri” instead of “Hey Siri” if you like. If you’re updating from a much older version of macOS without Siri enabled, you may also see a prompt asking whether you’d like Siri to listen for your spoken requests. A second Siri screen, titled Improve Siri & Dictation, could also appear, asking you to give Apple permission to listen to recordings of your voice in order to improve speech-to-text accuracy. For privacy reasons, I recommend selecting Not Now.

You can always enable or disable Siri later: go to System Settings > Siri > Requests once macOS 27 is up and running and choose your desired setting.

If you had to struggle through any or all of that, here’s when the “Setting Up Your Mac” screen makes its brief appearance. Then Setup Assistant quits automatically, and your macOS 27 desktop appears.

Not sure whether you’ve successfully upgraded since you missed the end of the process? Choose Apple menu > About This Mac. If the window says 27.0 or higher at the top under “macOS,” you’re running macOS 27.

After a clean install

Setup Assistant is an app that looks like a continuation of the macOS 27 Golden Gate installer, and the installer doesn’t display the name “Setup Assistant.” The assistant runs automatically after macOS 27 restarts at the end of the installation process, and walks you through a number of setup and configuration questions. It also offers to transfer files from another Mac or PC, another volume (which can be a bootable or data-only duplicate), or a Time Machine backup. That part is covered in how to use Migration Assistant.

Here’s an overview of the main screens you may see. Depending on your hardware setup and which decisions you make as you work your way through the installer, this list may vary somewhat:

• Hello: A “hello” screen greets you in a series of languages, changing every few seconds. There’s just one button at the bottom of the screen, “Get Started,” which you should click—even if the language has changed and you can’t read what it says!
• Select Your Country or Region: Your first task is to select a country or region on the Welcome screen and click Continue.
• Written and Spoken Languages: In some cases, you may be asked to confirm your preferred written and spoken languages, including those used for your keyboard and dictation.
• Accessibility: This screen gives you a convenient way to set a wide variety of accessibility preferences. Clicking any of the four titles shown (Vision, Motor, Hearing, or Cognitive) leads you through a series of options in that category, each with graphical descriptions of what the options do. You can adjust any or all of these, in any order—or click Not Now if you want to adjust them later in System Settings.
• Select Your Wi-Fi Network: Setup Assistant next looks for a network connection. You see a screen called Select Your Wi-Fi Network. Select the network to which you want to connect and, if required, enter the password. Then click Continue. (If you connect to the internet some other way—or if you have no internet connection—click Other Network Options and select the appropriate option.)
• Data & Privacy: A Data & Privacy screen appears, showing a handshake icon. Read the screen to learn that this icon should appear when an Apple feature is asking for permission to use your personal information. Finally, click Continue.
• Migration Assistant: Next is the Migration Assistant screen, which enables you to transfer files from your backup.

Although you could choose not to transfer your information now and use the standalone Migration Assistant app later, I generally find it quicker and more convenient to do it here. If you’re tempted to skip this step in order to have a completely clean copy of macOS 27, be sure to read about the nuke-and-pave option.

The next steps in Setup Assistant are mostly self-explanatory.

Depending on which version of macOS you’re upgrading from, what information you transferred, and your previous settings, you may see one or more additional screens. Most of these are identical to those described above. After each one, click Continue to advance through the remaining screens.

Regardless of what, if anything, Setup Assistant displays, macOS 27 itself may display any number of dialogs and alerts the first time you use it, such as password prompts, software update messages, and requests to enable various features. To learn how to deal with these and other immediate concerns, see what to do after installing.

Check for proper operation

In all probability, your upgrade will have gone smoothly, and everything will now work more or less the way you expect. However, even if everything looks fine, don’t declare upgrade victory until you have worked through the post-installation tasks, including dealing with any alerts and queries that pop up shortly after installation, checking for software updates, and configuring a few new options in System Settings.

If anything did go amiss, or if you later discover problems that aren’t solved by troubleshooting the upgrade, you can fall back to a clean install.

The short-lived Apple Intelligence & Siri setting pane is no more. In its place is a Siri pane, complete with a new icon. (For more about Siri on the Mac.)

In order for the new version of the pane, with its new icon, to appear, the Language setting on the pane must currently be set to English (United States). Set it to anything else—even English (Canada)—and you get the old icon with the Tahoe-era Siri features. Language support should expand in the future.

The most prominent change is that unlike the old pane, the new one no longer has either an Apple Intelligence switch or a Siri switch at the top. That is, you can no longer disable Apple Intelligence completely, and if you want to disable Siri (along with portions of Apple Intelligence), you must scroll to the bottom of the pane, click the red Turn Off Siri button, read a long description of all the things that will stop working if you do, and then click Turn Off Siri.

Interesting to note, however, is that even if you turn off Siri, “Visual Intelligence will continue to work but with more limited capabilities,” though Apple doesn’t spell out what those limitations are, and other Apple Intelligence features such as Writing Tools, Image Playground, and Shortcuts continue to work. All this is Apple’s heavy-handed way of pushing these new features, even if you actively dislike them and don’t ever want to use them.

Assuming you’re using English as your language—and that’s the only language supported in the initial release of macOS 27 Golden Gate—the pane adds three settings regarding the Siri App:

• Opens To: Select what appears when you open the app: either Recent Conversations or A New Conversation.
• Keep Conversations: Select 30 Days, 1 Year, or Forever. Note that there’s no longer a Delete Siri & Dictation History button, though you can manually delete any or all of the history items in the Siri app.
• Preview: Select None or 1–5 lines.

In addition, the Requests entry replaces the previous “Listen for” pop-up menu (where you can select “Siri” or “Hey Siri,” “Hey Siri,” or Off), and the Responses item gives you only two options: Spoken Response or Silent Response. (Tahoe had an Automatic option, along with Prefer Silent Responses and Prefer Spoken Responses.) Instead of clicking Siri Suggestions & Privacy to specify each app’s Siri settings, you now click App Access. And there are some additional ChatGPT options, for anyone who connects Siri to ChatGPT.

The Automatic Visual Look Up switch also lives here; what it does is covered in Siri AI on the Mac.

Finally, Tahoe let you set the keyboard shortcut used to invoke Siri, but macOS 27 does not. You can invoke Siri with ⌘-Space, the Spotlight shortcut, or with a second dedicated shortcut; holding that second shortcut speaks to Siri even if Requests is turned off. Although you can still change the Spotlight keyboard shortcut (in System Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Spotlight), there’s no evident way to change the dedicated Siri shortcut to anything else.

Control Siri conversations syncing among your devices in System Settings > Your Name > iCloud: click See All, then click Siri. You can disable Sync this Mac (enabled by default). The Keep Conversations setting is synced with the main Siri retention setting: change it here, and it’s changed globally, not just for iCloud.