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.
