Apple appears to be testing a hidden pop-up interface for Siri AI in the macOS 27 Golden Gate beta that brings up writing tools and pop-up actions whenever the user selects text.
Spotted by a member of Reddit’s r/MacOSBeta community, the floating icon appears at the top left of selected text, expanding as the pointer hovers over it to form a compact pop-up window of writing tools and contextual actions.
Currently, the popover offers the Rewrite, Proofread, “How does it sound?” and “Edit with Siri,” as well as options to create key points and summarize text. Contextual actions are based on selected content, including things like adding contact details, composing a message or email, creating a calendar event, viewing a location in Maps, and tracking flights or packages.
The Siri popover is disabled by default in macOS 27 Developer Beta 3 and Public Beta 1. Beta testers discovered that it could be enabled via a private feature flag, but the feature is clearly unfinished. Some actions are unresponsive, suggesting that Apple is still developing the underlying functionality.
Adventurous beta users can try it with the following Terminal command, followed by a restart:
sudo mkdir -p /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain && sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain/WritingTools LightweightUI_macOS -dict Enabled -bool true
And to disable the interface, use this command followed by a reboot:
Sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain/WritingTools LightweightUI_macOS -dict Enabled -bool false
Note that the UI behavior is inconsistent and there is no guarantee that the interface will make it to the final release of macOS 27 Golden Gate this fall.
