How to turn off AI file name suggestions in macOS 27 Golden Gate

The arrival of macOS 27 and iOS 27 It brings a good handful of artificial intelligence tools integrated into the system itself: create Safari extensions or Siri shortcuts just by describing them, or extend and reframe photos with a couple of gestures. That same philosophy has crept into one of the most basic tasks of the Finder, that of renaming a file. macOS 27 Golden Gate launches this automatic suggestion function: as soon as you start typing a new name, a small window appears with the label “Suggested“which proposes one or more alternatives generated by AI. For many users it has become a daily nuisance, so let's see how to get it out of the way.

Why AI name suggestions break your workflow

The problem is not just that the suggestion appears, but when it does. Most of the time you already have the name you want to put in your head, and the pop-up becomes an unsolicited distraction. It also doesn't help that it doesn't always appear instantly: you can be in the middle of writing the name by hand when, suddenly, the AI ​​decides to interrupt you with its proposals.

The precision of those suggestions leaves something to be desired, and the names it suggests don't always fit the actual contents of the file. There is a third problem, perhaps the most annoying of all: accidental selection. In a hurry, it is easy to accidentally click on one of those alternatives and lose, without realizing it, the name you just carefully typed.

It is not an isolated case: there are users who have had to correct the name of a file more than a dozen times for accidentally clicking on the suggestions window in the middle of a task. When this is repeated several times a day, the function stops being a help and becomes another obstacle in daily work with the device. finder.

How Finder generates these name suggestions

It is important to know how it works inside to understand why it fails so much. According to the description of the adjustment in macOS 27the names suggested when renaming, saving, and editing files are based on two things: the contents of the file itself and the names of other files already in that folder.

Apple seeks thematic coherence within each directory, but that logic does not always fit with each one's way of working. If you mix documents of different natures in the same folder, or follow your own convention based on dates or project codes, the AI ​​suggestion rarely gets you right, no matter how well trained the system is.

This dependence on local patterns has a side effect: in folders with very disparate contents, such as source code mixed with text documents and images, or files with unusual extensions, the system does not find a clear convention from which to learn and the suggestions are even less accurate.

Steps to turn off name suggestions in Finder

Disabling this feature will take you less than a minute and you don't need to touch the Terminal or ask for any special permissions: everything is managed from the Settings of the Finder itself. Follow these steps on your Mac with macOS 27 Golden Gate installed:

• Open a window of Finder.
• Click Finderin the top menu bar, and enter Settings… (or press Command +,).
• Check that you are in the tab General.
• Uncheck the box Suggest file names.

As soon as you close the Settings window, the change is applied immediately: the next time you rename a file or folder you will no longer see the window labeled “Suggested“. You can check this by trying to rename any document; if everything went well, the text box behaves as in previous versions of macOS, without interruptions in between.

It is worth keeping in mind that the description of the function itself speaks of three different moments– Rename, save and edit files. Although the switch has a single label focused on the renamed, by deactivating it you also stop receiving name suggestions in those other situations, so with a single gesture you cover all three cases.

What to do if suggestions keep appearing

In most cases, unchecking that box solves the problem instantly. But macOS 27 It is still a recent system, and some AI-related background processes may take a while to receive the shutdown order. If after deactivating the option you still see the pop-up window when renaming files, there is no need to worry: it is an easy fix.

Try force restarting Finder first: open the Force Quit window with Command + Option + Escapeselect Finder and press Reopen. If you use the Terminal, another quick way to achieve the same thing is to run the command killall Finder and press Enter; The Dock and Finder windows reload instantly and usually already apply the preference you've unchecked. If the suggestion window insists on appearing after these steps, the most compelling solution is to restart your Mac completely. When you boot up again, the system reloads the Finder settings from scratch and respects the marked preference.

How to keep order in your folders without depending on AI

Once you've regained manual control over renaming, you're probably wondering how to organize your files without automatic suggestions. The key is to have your own criteria and be consistent with it: many users choose to prefix the date in format year-month-day to the file name, which makes Finder sort them chronologically without any extra effort.

Finder itself offers plenty of tools to organize yourself without handing over that work to AI, such as color labels or smart folders based on criteria such as creation date or document type. Relying on those objective criteria, rather than what the system thinks you want, gives you much finer control over how your work is classified.

Another simple practice is to set a naming convention per project or per client in advance, and always apply it from the first file you create in that folder. This way you avoid the Finder having to guess anything, because the criteria has already been set by you from the beginning, and in the process you maintain consistency even if time passes between one file and the next.

Note that this setting lives locally: if you work with multiple Macs, it doesn't sync across iCloudso you will have to repeat these same steps on each computer where you want the Finder to stop suggesting names on its own.