macOS 27 Golden Gate Developer Beta Adds Liquid Glass Transparency Slider and Restores Colorful Sidebars

The first developer beta of macOS 27 Golden Gate became available on June 9, 2026. Users who installed the beta on a MacBook Neo found a new Liquid Glass slider in Appearance settings that controls UI transparency. The slider defaults to the middle position, which applies a touch of frosting.

The minimum transparency setting produces the most opaque look, while the maximum setting keeps the interface as see-through as the original Liquid Glass design. The Reduce Transparency option remains available in Accessibility settings. Using that option replaces transparent elements in the dock, Menu Bar, and Control Center with solid gray and black backgrounds.

MacOS 27 Golden Gate restores edge-to-edge sidebars with colorful icons and increases corner radii on windows throughout the system. The new battery icon, taken from iOS, replaces the previous design and displays less legible percentage information. Window snapping remains unchanged from macOS Sequoia.

MacOS 26 Tahoe introduced the basic feature last year, and neither Tahoe nor Golden Gate added faster tiling controls or the ability to rename virtual desktops. Apple stated that macOS Golden Gate should feel snappier due to faster search indexing. On the MacBook Neo used for testing, Spotlight search for local files performed similarly to macOS 26 Tahoe.

Side-by-side tests showed mixed app launch results. macOS Golden Gate opened Lightroom Classic and Slack faster than macOS 26 Tahoe, while Tahoe opened Photoshop and Steam faster. Siri AI in the first developer beta is available only through a waitlist.

Visual Intelligence and a revamped Spotlight Search that includes Siri AI are planned for future betas. macOS 27 Golden Gate is scheduled for release later in 2026.