macOS 27 Siri AI Features: What's New and Who Can Use It

macOS 27 "Golden Gate" started rolling out on September 14, 2026, bringing what Apple calls "an entirely new version of Siri" to the Mac, according to Apple Newsroom. The macOS 27 Siri AI features include a dedicated conversational app, personal-context search across messages and email, and systemwide actions that reach into files, folders, and other apps.

There's a hardware catch before anyone gets excited. The update requires an M1 Mac or newer, making it the first macOS release since the mid-2000s to drop Intel support entirely, Ars Technica reports in its review published this week.

Siri AI itself is rolling out as an English-language beta. French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish support are planned for October, Apple says.

Here's what's actually usable on Mac today, which machines qualify, and the storage, region, language, and third-party app caveats worth checking before installing.

What are the new Siri AI features in macOS 27?

Siri now lives in its own app, accessible from the Dock, the Menu bar, or Spotlight, and it works like a persistent chat window rather than a one-off voice command. Conversations sync through iCloud across Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Vision Pro, so a chat started on one device can continue on another, according to Apple and a hands-on review from Tom's Guide published two days ago.

Mac owners also get a systemwide "Ask Siri" option that Tom's Guide says will often appear at the top of right-click context menus for files, folders, and apps. A dedicated keyboard shortcut triggers Visual Intelligence, letting users select anything on screen and ask Siri about it directly, Apple confirms.

The assistant can pull from personal context, messages, email, photos, and reach out to the web for current information instead of relying only on what it already knows, per Apple's rollout announcement. Tom's Guide's three-month hands-on testing gives a concrete example: viewing a schedule surfaces an "add to calendar" button automatically, and users can generate Shortcuts automations just by typing or speaking what they want instead of building them step by step.

How Apple Intelligence improves Siri in macOS 27, and where it still falls short

Tom's Guide's take after three months of daily use: the new Siri app functions a lot like ChatGPT or Google Gemini in raw conversational terms, but the differentiator isn't chat quality, it's how deeply Siri is now welded into the operating system itself.

Writing Tools show what that integration looks like in practice. They can draft or revise text in nearly any app, proofread automatically as someone types, and in Mail or Messages, adapt tone and punctuation to match how a person typically writes to a specific recipient, according to Apple's June announcement.

That integration has real limits, though. Tom's Guide reports Siri AI does not yet work with Google apps like Gmail, and Apple confirms that personal-context access for outside apps depends on developers building Spotlight integration first. Right now that leaves a gap for anyone whose daily workflow runs through non-Apple apps.

Anyone still living in Gmail, Google Calendar, or other Google productivity tools should check this before assuming Siri can act as a universal assistant across everything installed on the Mac. The gap is specific to Google's apps in Tom's Guide's testing, not a blanket exclusion of every third-party service.

What the macOS 27 Apple Intelligence features require: hardware and storage

The hardware floor is an M1 chip. That covers the 2020 M1 MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini, the 2021 M1 iMac, any Mac Studio, the 2023 Mac Pro, and the 2026 MacBook Neo, Ars Technica's compatibility list shows. Anything running an Intel chip is excluded now, ending a support window that stretched back to the mid-2000s.

There's a second, quieter tier above that. The more advanced AFM 3 Core Advanced model needs an M3-family chip and at least 12GB of RAM. As of this rollout, Ars Technica reports that model only unlocks more expressive Siri voices and improved dictation accuracy, nothing else in the Siri AI feature set requires it, so M1 and M2 Macs still get Siri AI, just running the standard model underneath.

Storage impact shows up clearly on Macs with smaller SSDs. Ars Technica measured the jump from macOS Tahoe with Apple Intelligence disabled to Golden Gate at 17GB of additional space on an M1 MacBook Air and 22.42GB on an M3 MacBook Air, driven by a mandatory language-model download that kicks in the first time a newly restored Golden Gate Mac connects to the internet.

That download used to be optional. Ars Technica's review notes that the previous toggle for disabling Apple Intelligence and deleting its downloaded models is gone in macOS 27. In regions where Apple ships these features at all, that storage commitment is now unavoidable once the Mac goes online.

Who can't use Siri AI yet, and what should you check before relying on it?

Availability is uneven, and geography matters more than usual here. Siri AI is unavailable in China while Apple works through regulatory review, and in the EU, only Mac and Vision Pro users get access initially, meaning iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch owners in the EU are excluded for now, Apple states.

Several server-dependent features carry daily usage limits, including Siri AI itself, AI photo editing tools, Image Playground, and AFM 3 Cloud in Shortcuts. Expanded access comes with most iCloud+ subscription plans, Apple says. To use any of this at all, a Mac needs to be on the supported hardware list, have Apple Intelligence enabled, and be set to a supported language, per Apple's rollout notes.

Age is a separate gate: Siri AI is not available to users under 13, and languages beyond English won't arrive until October at the earliest.

On privacy, Apple says data handled through Private Cloud Compute isn't stored or made accessible to Apple or anyone else, according to Apple's June announcement. Apple has also said independent experts can inspect the server code behind that architecture to verify the claim, a point the company made describing the same Private Cloud Compute system in an earlier Apple Intelligence release. Both statements describe Apple's own privacy architecture; treat them as the company's account until outside testing of this specific rollout catches up.

Before you update: quick checklist

• Confirm the Mac has an M1 chip or newer. Intel Macs cannot run macOS 27 at all, per Ars Technica.
• Check free SSD space against the 17GB (M1) to 22.42GB (M3) storage jump Ars Technica measured, since the download is no longer optional once the Mac goes online.
• Verify the device and Apple Intelligence language are set to English, currently the only supported Siri AI language, with French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish due in October.
• Factor in region: no access yet in China, and EU users get Siri AI on Mac and Vision Pro only, not iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch.
• If daily work runs through Gmail or other Google apps, plan to keep using them alongside Siri rather than through it, since that integration isn't built yet.

What to do now

macOS 27 repositions Siri as a context-aware, cross-app assistant, with a dedicated app, contextual right-click menus, and Visual Intelligence built into the Mac for the first time, per Apple's announcement. That comes with real conditions: an M1 chip minimum, a genuine storage hit, and a narrower voice-and-dictation upgrade reserved for M3 Macs with 12GB of RAM, Ars Technica's testing confirms.

Check the Mac's chip generation and free storage against the numbers above before updating, confirm the region and language line up with the current beta, and if daily work runs through Google apps, treat Siri as a companion rather than a replacement for now.