MacBooks are getting a battery-life boost later this year, and it won't require buying new hardware.
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported in his latest Power On newsletter that Apple is targeting "battery-life upgrades and performance improvements" in macOS 27, the next major version of the Mac operating system. It's the kind of under-the-hood work that rarely gets keynote time at WWDC, but for users whose MacBooks no longer hold a full day's charge, it matters more than another visual refresh.
The battery work builds on smaller power-related features Apple already shipped in macOS 26.4 (codename Tahoe). That update introduced a Charge Limit setting that lets users cap charging anywhere from 80 to 100 percent to preserve long-term battery health, plus a "Slow Charger" indicator that flags underpowered adapters.
According to Heise Online, macOS 27 is shaping up as a polish-focused release. Beyond battery improvements, Apple plans bug fixes and refinements to the Liquid Glass design language that debuted in macOS 26.
Transparency effects and shadows that made text harder to read in the Control Center, Finder, and sidebar-heavy apps are being addressed. Apple's engineering team is describing the work internally as a "slight redesign." The Liquid Glass aesthetic itself is staying. Apple's goal is to make it look the way designers originally intended, after what Bloomberg described as an incomplete implementation in macOS 26.
macOS 27 will also finally ship the improved Siri that Apple has repeatedly delayed, along with a chatbot powered by foundation models trained with help from Google's Gemini. So far, macOS 26.5 -- expected in the coming days -- still carries the old Siri and Apple Intelligence unchanged.
Apple is scheduled to unveil macOS 27 at WWDC on June 8, with a public release expected in September.
