The macOS Golden Gate 27.3 beta turns on Live Activities in the menu bar for Apple Music, Clock and Voice Memos, so Macs without a Dynamic Island get the feature too. Third-party Mac apps can add their own Live Activities as well, and they show up in the menu bar and in the Dynamic Island on the touchscreen MacBook Pro.
Live Activities have been on the Mac since macOS 26, but only as mirrored iPhone activities, so an iPhone had to start them. Apple’s own apps can now start them on the Mac itself, and developers can drive Live Activities from a Mac app with ActivityKit.
Live Activities in the menu bar no longer need an iPhone
The beta adds activities that start on the Mac, beginning with Apple Music, Clock and Voice Memos. A running timer and a songcan sit at the top of the screen without an iPhone nearby. Screen recording also gets a menu bar activity in this beta as well.
The touchscreen MacBook Pro shows the same Live Activities in its Dynamic Island, where you can accept an AirDrop request or pause a song with a tap. Spotlight moves into the Dynamic Island only when Siri AI is available and enabled, but Live Activities do not depend on it. Other Apple silicon Macs show them in the menu bar instead.
Mac apps can start Live Activities with ActivityKit
Developers define an activity with ActivityKit and build its views with WidgetKit, the same pair of frameworks used on iPhone. One ActivityConfiguration holds both the menu bar view and the Dynamic Island regions, so a single activity covers a Mac with a touchscreen and a Mac without one. The Dynamic Island view has expanded, compact and minimal layouts, while the menu bar gets its own expanded view.
Buttons in either view run an App Intent that updates the activity, and the app ends the activity when the work is done. That settles a point Apple left open at the MacBook Pro launch, when it had not said whether third-party apps could add their own Live Activities.
macOS Golden Gate 27.3 is expected in December
The first macOS Golden Gate 27.3 beta is out for registered developers through Software Update, and the final release is expected in December. It follows macOS Golden Gate 27.2, which reached everyone on October 26. Everything here is beta behavior, so the apps and the menu bar layout can change before then.
Every Mac that runs macOS Golden Gate uses Apple silicon, so Intel Macs stay on macOS Tahoe and do not get the feature.
