Apple has slipped a nostalgic easter egg into iOS 27 and iPadOS 27, reviving Clarus the dogcow, a beloved mascot from the company's early days. The hidden surprise appears deep inside the Settings app for anyone who knows where to look.

How to find the dogcow in iOS 27

To trigger the easter egg, first make sure your device is running the latest software by heading to Settings ➝ General ➝ Software Update. Once you are on iOS 27 or iPadOS 27, open the Settings app and navigate to Appearance ➝ Liquid Glass.

From there, scroll through the sample images grouped under "Welcome to Apple Park." When you reach the final image, keep dragging upward with your finger. After a moment, the word "Moof!" appears in the search bar overlay and the image changes to reveal Clarus.

Who is Clarus the dogcow?

Clarus is a bitmap character with the head of a cow and the body of a dog, originally used in classic Mac OS to demonstrate page layout. The image showed users which orientation their paper would take when printed.

The glyph traces back to designer Susan Kare, who created it as part of the Cairo dingbat font bundled with the very first Macintosh in 1984. Over time, the quirky creature grew into the official mascot of Apple's Developer Technical Support team, and its signature sound, "Moof!", became a piece of Apple folklore.

A callback to Apple's easter egg tradition

In Apple's early years, developers routinely buried playful surprises inside their software. That practice has faded over the decades, and the company now includes such touches far more sparingly.

When easter eggs do turn up today, they tend to be subtle winks to Apple's history rather than the edgy or unauthorized hacks that once circulated. Enthusiasts have documented several of them across various versions of macOS over the years, and the Clarus revival fits neatly into that tradition of low-key homages.

For longtime Mac fans, the return of the dogcow is a small but meaningful reminder of the company's roots, hidden in plain sight for those willing to keep scrolling.