Temp Monitor app is an unobtrusive tool which will alert you when your Mac overheats, and the perfect utility to help you log all instances when the processor goes beyond a temperature which might be dangerous for both your Mac and yourself, if you’re using a MacBook or MacBook Pro.
Your Mac’s fans probably aren’t something you think about very often—until something goes wrong. Maybe you hear the fan too often, and it’s driving you nuts.
Maybe you’ve stopped hearing your fan altogether, even when you Mac feels hot. Either way, you should probably look into that. For that, we recommend an app called. This free program lets you see the temperature of all your Mac’s components, and the speed of your fans in RPM (rotations per minute.) You can even adjust the fans manually, though it’s probably not a good idea to do this very often. Getting Start With Macs Fan Control To get started, head to the and grab the Mac version (There’s a Windows version, but is only intended for —other PC fans aren’t supported.) The download comes in a ZIP archive, which you can unarchive simply by opening it. Drag the application icon to your Applications folder, then fire it up.
You’ll see a list of fans in the large left panel, and all of your temperature sensors on the right. The CPU will pretty much always be the warmest thing on your Mac, and the most important temperature to check—but it can be interesting to check the other sensors. For the most part, however, we’re interested in your fan’s current speed. The minimum, current, and maximum speed are shown in that order. If you see high CPU temperatures—say, over 80 or 90 degrees—and that the fans aren’t running, you might have an issue.
The same goes if you see a low CPU temperature—say, around 45—and the fans are running at full speed. To find out if your fans are working at all, you can click the “Custom” speed button. Turn the fan up and see if you can hear anything. If not, your fan has some issues. I really do not recommend disabling the automatic fan control: leaving your fans on constantly will wear them out and waste energy, and leaving them off will overheat your Mac over time. But for the occasional test, it’s nice to have control—just turn things back to automatic when you’re done. How to Troubleshoot Your Mac’s Fan Think your fan might be broken?
The first thing you should do is launch Apple Diagnostics, one of the. Turn your computer off, then hold the “D” key while turning it on. Your Mac will test your hardware, and let you know if your fan is broken. If you have a broken fan, you need to replace it. My advice: head to the Apple Store or any authorized Apple repair shop. I managed to replace my own broken fan on a 2011 MacBook Pro, but the internals inside more recent Macs are a great deal less friendly for home repair. It’s not impossible, however: check out ‘s guides if you want to attempt the repair yourself.
But look at all the steps carefully, and only proceed if you’re completely confident you can get this done yourself. If the hardware report says everything is fine with your fan, your issue is probably a software one. In these cases, often works—this is the low-level controller that manages thermal management and other things. If that doesn’t solve your issue, consider heading to an Apple Store, or another authorized repair shop. Passively Monitor Your Fan Speed If you want to impress your friends in conversation, you should keep track of your Mac’s fans and relay to them how fast they tend to spin during particular tasks.
I’m sure everyone will be fascinated at your next dinner party. To do this, open Mac Fan Control, then click the Preferences button in the bottom-left corner. Head to the Menubar Display tab, then select a fan and/or a sensor to display in the menu bar. Click “Close”, and you’ll see the information in your menu bar at all times. Outside of amazing conversations, monitoring the fan speed passively like this can be helpful if you suspect there’s a problem. It’s nothing I’d keep on constantly, but when things are acting funny it’s a nice tool to have around.
Image credit.
Add or remove columns in each of these panes by choosing View Columns from the menu bar. The View menu also allows you to choose which processes are shown in each pane:. All Processes. All Processes Hierarchically: Processes that belong to other processes, so you can see the parent/child relationship between them.
My Processes: Processes owned by your macOS user account. System Processes: Processes owned by macOS.
Other User Processes: Processes that aren’t owned by the or current user. Active Processes: Running processes that aren’t sleeping.
Inactive Processes: Running processes that are sleeping. Windowed Processes: Processes that can create a window. These are usually apps. Selected Processes: Processes that you selected in the Activity Monitor window. Applications in the last 8 hours: Apps that were running processes in the last 8 hours. The CPU pane shows how processes are affecting CPU (processor) activity: Click the top of the “% CPU” column to sort by the percentage of CPU capability used by each process.
This information and the information in the can help identify. More information is available at the bottom of the CPU pane:. System: The percentage of CPU capability currently used by system processes, which are processes that belong to macOS. User: The percentage of CPU capability currently used by apps that you opened, or by the processes those apps opened.
Idle: The percentage of CPU capability not being used. CPU Load: The percentage of CPU capability currently used by all System and User processes. The graph moves from right to left and updates at the intervals set in View Update Frequency. The color blue shows the percentage of total CPU capability currently used by user processes.
The color red shows the percentage of total CPU capability currently used by system processes. Threads: The total number of threads used by all processes combined. Processes: The total number of processes currently running. You can also see CPU or GPU usage in a separate window or in the Dock:. To open a window showing current processor activity, choose Window CPU Usage. To show a graph of this information in your Dock, choose View Dock Icon Show CPU Usage. To open a window showing recent processor activity, choose Window CPU History.
To show a graph of this information in your Dock, choose View Dock Icon Show CPU History. To open a window showing recent graphics processor (GPU) activity, choose Window GPU History.
Energy usage related to such activity is incorporated into the energy-impact measurements in the tab of Activity Monitor. The Memory pane shows information about how memory is being used: More information is available at the bottom of the Memory pane:. Memory Pressure: The Memory Pressure graph helps illustrate the availability of memory resources. The graph moves from right to left and updates at the intervals set in View Update Frequency.
The current state of memory resources is indicated by the color at the right side of the graph:. Green: Memory resources are available. Yellow: Memory resources are still available but are being tasked by memory-management processes, such as compression. Red: Memory resources are depleted, and macOS is using your startup drive for memory. To make more RAM available, you can quit one or more apps or install more RAM. This is the most important indicator that your Mac may need more RAM. Physical Memory: The amount of RAM installed in your Mac.
Memory Used: The total amount of memory currently used by all apps and macOS processes. App Memory: The total amount of memory currently used by apps and their processes. Wired Memory: Memory that can’t be compressed or paged out to your startup drive, so it must stay in RAM. The wired memory used by a process can’t be borrowed by other processes. The amount of wired memory used by an app is determined by the app's programmer. Compressed: The amount of memory in RAM that is compressed to make more RAM memory available to other processes.
Look in the Compressed Mem column to see the amount of memory compressed for each process. Swap Used: The space used on your startup drive by macOS memory management.
It's normal to see some activity here. As long as memory pressure is not in the red state, macOS has memory resources available. Cached Files: Memory that was recently used by apps and is now available for use by other apps. For example, if you've been using Mail and then quit Mail, the RAM that Mail was using becomes part of the memory used by cached files, which then becomes available to other apps. If you open Mail again before its cached-files memory is used (overwritten) by another app, Mail opens more quickly because that memory is quickly converted back to app memory without having to load its contents from your startup drive. For more information about memory management, refer to the.
The Energy pane shows overall energy use and the energy used by each app:. Energy Impact: A relative measure of the current energy consumption of the app. Lower numbers are better. A triangle to the left of an app's name means that the app consists of multiple processes. Click the triangle to see details about each process. Avg Energy Impact: The average energy impact for the past 8 hours or since the Mac started up, whichever is shorter. Average energy impact is also shown for apps that were running during that time, but have since been quit.
![Temperature Temperature](http://cdn.osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/memory-usage-monit-mac-osx.jpg)
The names of those apps are dimmed. App Nap: Apps that support App Nap consume very little energy when they are open but not being used.
For example, an app might nap when it's hidden behind other windows, or when it's open in a space that you aren't currently viewing. Preventing Sleep: Indicates whether the app is preventing your Mac from going to sleep. More information is available at the bottom of the Energy pane:. Energy Impact: A relative measure of the total energy used by all apps. The graph moves from right to left and updates at the intervals set in View Update Frequency. Graphics Card: The type of graphics card currently used.
Higher–performance cards use more energy. Macs that support save power by using integrated graphics. They switch to a higher-performance graphics chip only when an app needs it. 'Integrated' means the Mac is currently using integrated graphics. Means the Mac is currently using high-performance graphics. To identify apps that are using high-performance graphics, look for apps that show 'Yes' in the Requires High Perf GPU column.
Remaining Charge: The percentage of charge remaining on the battery of a portable Mac. Time Until Full: The amount of time your portable Mac must be plugged into an AC power outlet to become fully charged. Time on AC: The time elapsed since your portable Mac was plugged into an AC power outlet. Time Remaining: The estimated amount of battery time remaining on your portable Mac.
Time on Battery: The time elapsed since your portable Mac was unplugged from AC power. Battery (Last 12 hours): The battery charge level of your portable Mac over the last 12 hours. The color green shows times when the Mac was getting power from a power adapter. As energy use increases, the length of time that a Mac can operate on battery power decreases. If the battery life of your portable Mac is shorter than usual, you can use the Avg Energy Impact column to find apps that have been using the most energy recently. Quit those apps if you don't need them, or contact the developer of the app if you notice that the app's energy use remains high even when the app doesn't appear to be doing anything. The Disk pane shows the amount of data that each process has read from your disk and written to your disk.
It also shows 'reads in' and 'writes out' (IO), which is the number of times that your Mac accesses the disk to read and write data. The information at the bottom of the Disk pane shows total disk activity across all processes. The graph moves from right to left and updates at the intervals set in View Update Frequency.
The graph also includes a pop-up menu to switch between showing IO or data as a unit of measurement. The color blue shows either the number of reads per second or the amount of data read per second. The color red shows either the number of writes out per second or the amount of data written per second. To show a graph of disk activity in your Dock, choose View Dock Icon Show Disk Activity. The Network pane shows how much data your Mac is sending or receiving over your network. Use this information to identify which processes are sending or receiving the most data. The information at the bottom of the Network pane shows total network activity across all apps. The graph moves from right to left and updates at the intervals set in View Update Frequency.
The graph also includes a pop-up menu to switch between showing packets or data as a unit of measurement. The color blue shows either the number of packets received per second or the amount of data received per second.
The color red shows either the number of packets sent per second or the amount of data sent per second. To show a graph of network usage in your Dock, choose View Dock Icon Show Network Usage. In macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 or later, Activity Monitor shows the Cache pane when is enabled in the Sharing pane of System Preferences. The Cache pane shows how much cached content that local networked devices have uploaded, downloaded, or dropped over time. Use the Maximum Cache Pressure information to learn whether to adjust Content Caching settings to provide more disk space to the cache.
Lower cache pressure is better. The graph at the bottom shows total caching activity over time. Choose from the pop-up menu above the graph to change the interval: last hour, 24 hours, 7 days, or 30 days.