Siri
In the menu bar and Dock, able to find files by description, adjust settings and drag its results into a document. Results could be pinned to Notification Centre.
At launch
- Announced
- June 13, 2016
- Released
- September 20, 2016
- Follows
- El Capitan (10.11)
- Followed by
- High Sierra (10.13)
- Name change
- OS X → macOS
Overview
Siri arrives, and the operating system gets its name back.
Five years after the iPhone 4s, Siri came to the Mac — in the menu bar, in the Dock, able to search files by description and pin its answers to Notification Centre. And "OS X" became "macOS", restoring a link to the hardware that had been cut in 2012.
The quieter theme was that the Mac stopped being an island in the room. An Apple Watch could unlock it as you sat down. Text copied on an iPhone could be pasted on the Mac. The Desktop and Documents folders became iCloud folders that any of your devices could reach.
Continuity
A watch that unlocks it, a clipboard that crosses the room.
Auto Unlock let a paired Apple Watch sign you in as you approached. Universal Clipboard meant copy on one device and paste on another, with no visible mechanism at all — the sort of feature people describe as magic mainly because there is nothing to see.
Siri, answering in the corner of the screen
Features
What shipped.
Siri, several kinds of Continuity, and a filesystem quietly being tested in the background.
Auto Unlock
A paired Apple Watch on your wrist signed you in as you sat down, using a time-of-flight measurement to defeat relay attacks.
At launch
Universal Clipboard
Copy on the iPhone, paste on the Mac, with no visible setup. Still one of the most quietly used Continuity features.
At launch
iCloud Desktop and Documents
Those two folders synced to iCloud and appeared on every device — convenient, and the cause of a great deal of confusion about where files actually were.
At launch
Optimised Storage
Offloading old files to iCloud, emptying the Trash automatically and clearing caches when the disk filled — aimed squarely at 128 GB laptops.
At launch
Apple Pay on the web
Paying in Safari by confirming on an iPhone or Watch, with the card details never reaching the merchant.
At launch
Picture in Picture
A video floating above everything else in a corner, pinned there while you worked.
At launch
Tabs everywhere
Any app using standard windows got tabs at no cost to its developer — Maps, Mail, Pages, TextEdit, all of them at once.
At launch
APFS preview
The new filesystem shipped as a developer preview, a year before High Sierra switched every SSD over to it.
At launch
The name, again
OS X, and then macOS.
Four years after Mountain Lion dropped "Mac" from the name, Sierra put it back — in lower case, as macOS, matching iOS, watchOS and tvOS in a single consistent family.
It was the fourth name the system had carried: Mac OS X from 2001, OS X from 2012, macOS from 2016. It has not moved since, surviving even the jump from 15 to 26.
Desktop
The range it is named after.
Alpenglow on the eastern Sierra, all pink cloud and orange granite — the warmest desktop Apple had shipped up to that point.
SierraAlpenglow on the rangeThere was only ever one. A system-wide Dark Mode did not arrive until Mojave in 2018, so this page's light and dark appearances are ours, not Apple's — the switch in the corner still works, but the desktop of the day looked like this and only this.
Lineage
Where it sits.
California landmarks from Mavericks onward. Sierra took the mountain range, and stayed for two releases.
macOS 10.12 · 2016
Sierra
Siri on the Mac, Auto Unlock, and the return of the name macOS.
Compatibility
Machines that could run it.
Sierra made the first real cut in four years, retiring everything older than late 2009 and ending the long run for the 2007 and 2008 machines.
- iMac
- Late 2009 and later
- MacBook
- Late 2009 and later
- MacBook Air
- Late 2010 and later
- MacBook Pro
- Mid 2010 and later
- Mac mini
- Mid 2010 and later
- Mac Pro
- Mid 2010 and later
- Memory
- 2 GB