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macOS 27 Golden Gate doesn’t give the Photos app a dramatic redesign. Instead, Photos gains a surprisingly broad set of improvements this year, ranging from Apple Intelligence-powered editing to new ways to organize and sort your collection, better sharing tools, and much more.

The flashiest updates live in a new Tools pane. Clean Up gets a significant quality boost, handling larger objects and more complex scenes. A fast mode tackles small blemishes, while high quality mode handles intricate edits. The new Extend tool uses generative models to expand an image beyond its original edges. Spatial Reframing builds a 3D view of a scene, letting you rotate, pan, or zoom to change the camera position.

In macOS 27, iCloud Shared Albums finally support full-resolution sharing and all common photo and video formats. Friends using Android or Windows can join through iCloud.com. You can save every photo from a Shared Album with one click, and new albums can expire after 30 days. Photos brings back slideshow control, adds a Captured by Me collection, and introduces one-to-five-star ratings. iCloud Photos syncing can be prioritized, and search has been rebuilt.