The macOS 27 public beta is worth it just for the Liquid Glass tweaks

The macOS 27 Golden Gate public beta is here, and anyone with an M-series Mac now has easier access to test-drive Apple’s latest changes — including a more subdued Liquid Glass aesthetic. That’s reason enough to be at least a little excited for macOS 27 (particularly if you’re on Tahoe and disliking all the transparency). But there are other things that make trying out this beta a little more appealing than usual.

There was a rumor earlier this year that this new macOS would focus on performance optimizations, bug fixes, and a bunch of small quality-of-life improvements, rather than being a major overhaul. And aside from dialing down Liquid Glass, that is what Golden Gate feels like. Apple even leaned into this during its WWDC keynote with a wall of text listing such boring but practical tweaks as “Optimized CPU scheduler” and “Support for Mac mirroring in 5K resolution.”