Can I get the CPU temperature and fan speed from the command line in OS X?

Question

Is there a command I can run from the command line in OS X to get the current CPU temperature and/or the fan speed(s)?

To be more specific, I'd like to be able to get the same info available in the iStat widget under the Fans and Temps tabs on the command line.

I'd like to be able to find these values at the command line so it could be scripted and plugged into a monitoring setup on my Mac - I have a data-nerd desire to collect and graph these values (and other stats) on my Macbook over time.

On Linux, it seems like this would be possible by reading a pseudo-file under the /proc directory, but I'm not sure how to do the equivalent on OS X (if it exists).

I don't know about built-in, but iStat Menus is a menu bar app that includes that info. iStat Nano and iStat Pro are dashboard widgets that also include this information. — Arc676, Jan 25 '15 at 02:00
here is a Terminal + app combo http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/54332/46541 — Ruskes, Jan 25 '15 at 03:42
Simply install smcFanControl open-source App, which shows current speed beside clock (beside allowing manual changing). — Top-Master, Jun 11 '22 at 08:00

Satish · Accepted Answer · 2020-08-14T11:22:18.323

262

Option #1) you may consider using inbuilt utility powermetrics to get the cpu and gpu temperature and lot more other details.

To get CPU temperature:

sudo powermetrics --samplers smc |grep -i "CPU die temperature"

To get GPU temperature:

sudo powermetrics --samplers smc |grep -i "GPU die temperature"

To get lot more details:

sudo powermetrics

This has been tested on macbook pro with macOS mojave.

Option #2) Install Intel® Power Gadget officially provided by Intel from here

Intel® Power Gadget and then launch Intel Power Gadget from the launchpad.

Result Screen:

edited Aug 14 '20 at 11:22

answered Oct 18 '19 at 15:17

Satish

2,772

6

The options here are great especially Powermetrics – heretoinfinity Dec 21 '19 at 21:05
45

You can do sudo powermetrics --samplers smc -i1 -n1 to get a single instant sample of SMC sensor readings, including CPU and GPU temprature and fan speed. – rjmunro Mar 19 '20 at 17:04
3

powermetrics doesn't list any temperatures for me, on a 2018 MacMini running Mojave. – benwiggy Jun 30 '20 at 10:03
@benwiggy you can try sudo powermetrics and see if it return other meaningful info, check powermetrics man page. Or option#2 you can give it a try. – Satish Jun 30 '20 at 14:32
4

No, sudo powermetrics doesn't work either. "unable to get smc values" on a Mac Mini. I don't like the Intel Gadget, as it installs stuff into the system, and it only shows 1 core, weirdly. – benwiggy Aug 09 '20 at 07:51
15

on m1 I'm getting unrecognized sampler: smc – Vladyslav Zavalykhatko Aug 08 '21 at 07:55
@VladyslavZavalykhatko does sudo powermetrics works on m1? if so, you can find some other way of limiting sensor reading to count 1. – Satish Aug 09 '21 at 06:30
Is it possible to make a non-sudo command? – Jerry Green Oct 11 '21 at 09:08
1

@JerryGreen Ideally /etc/sudoers file can be modified on unix system to allow specific user to run specific command/all commands without sudo. But updating this needs admin rights. Note: I haven't tested this on mac. – Satish Oct 11 '21 at 14:36

score 258 · Answer 2 · edited Aug 25 '20 at 18:06

258

The iStats ruby gem lets you see the CPU temperature via the command-line.

Installation

$ gem install iStats

Usage

$ istats all

Screenshot

edited Aug 25 '20 at 18:06

raurora

123

answered Apr 13 '14 at 20:53

Chris911

2,867

sudo gem install iStats failed on brand new MBP Mavericks. Error looks like this: http://hastebin.com/lihaqiyeyu.vhdl – trusktr May 08 '14 at 06:15
6

Unfortunately that's a known error. If you take a look at the Github repo there's a note about it. You can either install Ruby using RVM or brew or use this command to install the gem instead: sudo ARCHFLAGS=-Wno-error=unused-command-line-argument-hard-error-in-future gem install iStats – Chris911 May 08 '14 at 06:19
3

Awesome, works like a charm (nice sparklines too). Just had to do it with "sudo" – laander Sep 03 '14 at 15:09
9

For live updates: watch -n0 istats (I had to brew install watch on OSX before doing the above) See: http://superuser.com/q/361902 – Jun 22 '15 at 02:36
9

To get rid of display errors use this: watch --color istats. – Lenar Hoyt Jun 28 '15 at 15:40
Hi Chris, I know nothing about Ruby - what's the full path to iStats? – Jay Versluis Oct 12 '15 at 02:20
1

Once iStats is installed you should be able to run the istats command from any path. – Chris911 Oct 12 '15 at 02:28
Worked like a chard in El Capitan. – Reza Mar 07 '16 at 03:34
1

second to el capitan working with this command – xaxxon Mar 11 '16 at 06:55
4

You don't have to (and probably shouldn't) use sudo. Instead, use gem install --user-install iStats – Michael come lately Jan 08 '18 at 17:10
@Michael I installed it with gem install --user-install iStats, but when I try to run istats, I have a "command not found" message. – darksoulsong Nov 21 '19 at 09:25
1

@darksoulsong Is /usr/local/bin part of your $PATH? – Michael come lately Nov 21 '19 at 14:12
it installs but then just says that iStats is not found – DataGreed Jul 16 '20 at 18:45
Returning a week after installing to say I use it istats command very regularly now. But today I discovered istats scan, which gives many more readings still. Thanks for this great gem! – stevec Jan 21 '21 at 15:20

score 48 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 14 '15 at 17:07

48

On BSD systems, the sysctl utility can provides similar information as the /proc tree in Linux. It actually report some CPU/GPU temperature information from Xnu CPU Power Management (XCPM):

sysctl machdep.xcpm.cpu_thermal_level
sysctl machdep.xcpm.gpu_thermal_level

However this doesn't seem to be a temperature reading but only an indication of the temperature level compared to some reference.

answered Jul 14 '15 at 17:07

Lætitia

1,151

9

These 2 commands print machdep.xcpm.cpu_thermal_level: 0 and machdep.xcpm.gpu_thermal_level: 0 on Macos 10.12 – SebMa Sep 26 '17 at 11:53
3

On 10.13.4 I get what looks like vaguely credible readings (currently machdep.xcpm.cpu_thermal_level: 58) – tripleee May 14 '18 at 12:46
what are units ? celsius or fahrenheit, I get as an output: machdep.xcpm.cpu_thermal_level: 93 – dev_null Jun 07 '19 at 16:32
Yeah. What are the units?\ – Chet Aug 15 '19 at 21:49
2

These both return 0 for my MBP running the latest macOS (10.15.4).
The stock command-line utility powermetrics also shows some "thermal level"s as 0, but happens to also display the CPU/GPU die temperatures which is what I (and I imagine everyone else) actually care about. See Satish's answer and @rjmunro's comment.
– WD40 Apr 07 '20 at 15:23
It turns out I spoke too soon, once my temperature went above ~50°C the thermal level started increasing. But I still have no idea what it means. – WD40 Apr 08 '20 at 06:27
Best answer: nothing to install, no sudo required. – dolmen Jul 20 '21 at 10:20
It show instant result, which is good, but how come it is showing different result than powermetrics command? – Jerry Green Oct 11 '21 at 09:10

score 39 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 11 '13 at 22:32

39

This open source command line utility worked for me: https://github.com/lavoiesl/osx-cpu-temp.

answered Nov 11 '13 at 22:32

Dust

501

4

I thought it will be harder to compile this, but it's not! Works like a charm! – Aron Lorincz Jul 17 '15 at 20:37
2

Thanks, Dust! I'm not much for building stuff from scratch but this was easy and works out of the box. M. Lavoie is using code Apple released a while back: Apple System Management Control (SMC) Tool Copyright (C) 2006 but it works fine on my 2011 Mini. – Tai Viinikka Oct 18 '16 at 13:54
17

brew install osx-cpu-temp – seeker_of_bacon Jun 04 '19 at 18:23
3

Just so you know, the sensor this uses is the CPU Proximity temperature, which is different from the CPU PECI (overall CPU temperature) and each core's individual temperatures, that are often significantly higher than the CPU Proximity. Macs Fan Control reports CPU Proximity on my Mac as 55ºC, but CPU PECI as 63ºC – Velociround Aug 14 '20 at 00:15
2

Reports 0.0°C on mac studio (arm) – Soylent Graham Jul 19 '22 at 15:28
Note that for recent Macs, the fan speed will not wortk: https://github.com/lavoiesl/osx-cpu-temp/issues/21 – Paul Cager Dec 08 '22 at 10:36

score 20 · Answer 5 · edited Jan 11 '24 at 05:17

20

Update: @PressingOnAlways has notified me that this software is now considered legacy by its developer. Further details on the stopped support can be found on their legacy-software website.

Install Temperature Monitor and, assuming you installed it in /Applications, run the following: /Applications/TemperatureMonitor.app/Contents/MacOS/tempmonitor -c -l -a

You can also use the updated (however no longer in development, but downloadable) Hardware Monitor from the same author: /Applications/to/HardwareMonitor.app/Contents/MacOS/hwmonitor

edited Jan 11 '24 at 05:17

Giacomo1968

5,623

answered Jun 21 '12 at 02:13

GhostLyrics

985

1

Thanks for this. I take it if I need to install this third-party app for it, there isn't a known built-in way to do the same? – matt b Jun 21 '12 at 15:30
2

No, I don't think there is. I've used that same program to display the values with Geektool for a time but didn't find any information about a built-in tool. Mind you that that was more than a year ago, so there ,ight be now. I doubt it though. – GhostLyrics Jun 21 '12 at 22:31
It would be great if there was a copy of tempmonitor on homebrew – Ehtesh Choudhury Aug 04 '13 at 23:49
tempmonitor does not show fan speed – Michael Apr 11 '14 at 01:37
2

Note TemperatureMonitor does not support any Macs made after October 2013, or so it told me when I tried to run it on my MacBookPro Retina. – Paul Jul 30 '14 at 02:29
3

As of Oct 1st, Temperature Monitor has been suspended - they went "Pro". – eduncan911 Oct 21 '14 at 19:54
7

this no longer is viable as this software is no longer kept up to date. – PressingOnAlways May 13 '15 at 00:50
the app still works in big sur - even if no longer maintained. just run /path/to/HardwareMonitor.app/Contents/MacOS/hwmonitor in terminal – Costin Gușă Sep 09 '20 at 09:05

score 12 · Answer 6 · answered Dec 21 '21 at 19:57

12

The SMC sampler is not available on the M1 (or on Big Sur, not sure which). You can get frequencies and power usage for CPU and GPU with powermetrics, but not the temperature, as far as I can tell.

The temperature can probably still be read from the SMC, but it looks like the keys changed for the M1, and might even be different between the M1 models.

answered Dec 21 '21 at 19:57

Rishab Surana

229

This should be a comment, not an answer. – huyz Jan 04 '24 at 17:30

score 6 · Answer 7 · edited Jan 11 '24 at 05:22

There are two main ways to view your CPU stats if you don‘t want to install additional software you can view a lot of details from the terminal / command line.

Type on the terminal...

sudo powermetrics

And at the bottom you will see the following:

**** SMC sensors ****
CPU Thermal level: 51
GPU Thermal level: 35
IO Thermal level: 1
Fan: 2060 rpm 
CPU die temperature: 88.36 C (fan) 
GPU die temperature: 74.38 C 
CPU Plimit: 0.00 
GPU Plimit (Int): 0.00

GPU2 Plimit (Ext1): 0.00

Or try typing. (But Apple maybe removed the details from this to just numbers 0 or 1?)

sysctl -a | grep cpu | more

Or thermal / temperature details only?

sysctl -a | grep thermal

The output should look like this:

hw.ncpu: 8
hw.activecpu: 8
hw.physicalcpu: 4
hw.physicalcpu_max: 4
hw.logicalcpu: 8
hw.logicalcpu_max: 8
hw.cputype: 7
hw.cpusubtype: 8
hw.cpu64bit_capable: 1
hw.cpufamily: 280134364
hw.cpufrequency: 2800000000
hw.cpufrequency_min: 2800000000
hw.cpufrequency_max: 2800000000
hw.cputhreadtype: 1
machdep.cpu.max_basic: 13
machdep.cpu.max_ext: 2147483656
machdep.cpu.vendor: GenuineIntel
machdep.cpu.brand_string: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4980HQ CPU @ 2.80GHz
machdep.cpu.family: 6
machdep.cpu.model: 70
machdep.cpu.extmodel: 4
machdep.cpu.extfamily: 0
machdep.cpu.stepping: 1
machdep.cpu.feature_bits: 9221960xxxxxx657855
machdep.cpu.leaf7_feature_bits: 10155 0
machdep.cpu.leaf7_feature_bits_edx: 261xxxxxx2
machdep.cpu.extfeature_bits: 1424xxxxxx52
machdep.cpu.signature: 263777
machdep.cpu.brand: 0
machdep.cpu.features: FPU VME DE PSE TSC MSR PAE MCE CX8 APIC SEP MTRR PGE MCA CMOV PAT PSE36 CLFSH DS ACPI MMX FXSR SSE SSE2 SS HTT TM PBE SSE3 PCLMULQDQ DTES64 MON DSCPL VMX SMX EST TM2 SSSE3 FMA CX16 TPR PDCM SSE4.1 SSE4.2 x2APIC MOVBE POPCNT AES PCID XSAVE OSXSAVE SEGLIM64 TSCTMR AVX1.0 RDRAND F16C
machdep.cpu.leaf7_features: RDWRFSGS TSC_THREAD_OFFSET BMI1 AVX2 SMEP BMI2 ERMS INVPCID FPU_CSDS MDCLEAR IBRS STIBP L1DF SSBD
machdep.cpu.extfeatures: SYSCALL XD 1GBPAGE EM64T LAHF LZCNT RDTSCP TSCI
machdep.cpu.logical_per_package: 16
machdep.cpu.cores_per_package: 8
machdep.cpu.microcode_version: 28
machdep.cpu.processor_flag: 5
machdep.cpu.mwait.linesize_min: 64
machdep.cpu.mwait.linesize_max: 64
machdep.cpu.mwait.extensions: 3
machdep.cpu.mwait.sub_Cstates: 270624
machdep.cpu.thermal.sensor: 1
machdep.cpu.thermal.dynamic_acceleration: 1
machdep.cpu.thermal.invariant_APIC_timer: 1
machdep.cpu.thermal.thresholds: 2
machdep.cpu.thermal.ACNT_MCNT: 1
machdep.cpu.thermal.core_power_limits: 1
machdep.cpu.thermal.fine_grain_clock_mod: 1
machdep.cpu.thermal.package_thermal_intr: 1
machdep.cpu.thermal.hardware_feedback: 0
machdep.cpu.thermal.energy_policy: 1
machdep.cpu.xsave.extended_state: 7 832 832 0
machdep.cpu.xsave.extended_state1: 1 0 0 0
machdep.cpu.arch_perf.version: 3
machdep.cpu.arch_perf.number: 4
machdep.cpu.arch_perf.width: 48
machdep.cpu.arch_perf.events_number: 7
machdep.cpu.arch_perf.events: 0
machdep.cpu.arch_perf.fixed_number: 3
machdep.cpu.arch_perf.fixed_width: 48
machdep.cpu.cache.linesize: 64
machdep.cpu.cache.L2_associativity: 8
machdep.cpu.cache.size: 256
machdep.cpu.tlb.inst.large: 8
machdep.cpu.tlb.data.small: 64
machdep.cpu.tlb.data.small_level1: 64
machdep.cpu.tlb.shared: 1024
machdep.cpu.address_bits.physical: 39
machdep.cpu.address_bits.virtual: 48
machdep.cpu.core_count: 4
machdep.cpu.thread_count: 8
machdep.cpu.tsc_ccc.numerator: 0
machdep.cpu.tsc_ccc.denominator: 0
machdep.xcpm.cpu_thermal_level: 0

You will notice the frequency details and also some thermal info. You can also grep thermal if you are only interested in that.

I would love it if sysctl actually showed the temperature, it would be so easy, fast and integrated... but it reports only 0 or 1 on a 2014 Mac Mini running the latest macOS Mojave — Velociround, Aug 14 '20 at 00:16

score 4 · Answer 8 · answered Jan 25 '15 at 03:19

4

OS X does not offer this functionality. smcFanControl and the iStat widgets are the typical go-to choices for this issue. I personally use smcFanControl. It gives me both the temperature and the ability to monitor fan operation.

answered Jan 25 '15 at 03:19

Trane Francks

2,380
12
12

NOTE: iStat Pro isn't available from Bjango any more, but this MacRumors thread has download links for patched versions. You may have to scroll around a bit to find the most recent version, but it's free (always has been, no piracy here) and IMO is overall better than Menus even though it's not supported. – JMY1000 Feb 19 '16 at 19:41

score 2 · Answer 9 · answered Apr 10 '21 at 04:22

The tool osx-cpu-temp works perfectly for me ! (thanks) I made a little script to actuate the value each second and to prettify the output (it uses toilet for the pretty-output) :

while true; do; clear; osx-cpu-temp | toilet -f smblock; sleep 1; done;

Using ITerm2, I made a profile that lauches this command just after logging. ITerm2 can also store a window arrangement, so I stored one with tty-clock, htop and my command (named it cpu-temp) sized like a status bar, with very small font.

score 1 · Answer 10 · edited Sep 11 '22 at 18:45

1

The smc values for temperature sensors are accessible via ObjectiveC with swift bindings and several python libraries and packages take advantage of this to make it easy to pull values.

https://github.com/nicolargo/glances

This one on python has auto-update && colors built-in and can be installed with a simple curl or wget command if requirements are already met.

Requirements

python >= 2.6 or >= 3.3 (tested with version 2.6, 2.7, 3.3, 3.4)
psutil >= 2.0.0
setuptools

edited Sep 11 '22 at 18:45

bmike

235,889

answered Feb 19 '16 at 19:20

AIOE

11

This answer works very well with modern os in the fall of 2022 – bmike Sep 11 '22 at 18:48
Why not just brew install glances? – Tmanok Feb 09 '23 at 06:26

score 1 · Answer 11 · edited Aug 09 '20 at 18:23

1

I tried to improve option #1 from Satish's answer to display information related to the SMC sensors:

sudo powermetrics | sed -n '/\*\*\*\* SMC sensors \*\*\*\*/,/Number of prochots/p'

edited Aug 09 '20 at 18:23

IconDaemon

19,234

answered Aug 09 '20 at 16:08

Kllngii

11

score 1 · Answer 12 · answered Sep 11 '22 at 18:34

Not sure this is possible without any external tools, but if you're looking for something small/lightweight (and open source) I highly recommend Stats.

It includes a commandline tool, at /Applications/Stats.app/Contents/Resources/smc which can be symlinked to /usr/local/bin for convenience.

E.g to list all temps/sensors:

smc list -t

score 0 · Answer 13 · answered Jul 15 '19 at 09:33

0

On my mid-2011 MacMini with OSX 10.13.6 I use smc to set and check the fan speed plus osx-cpu-temp for the temperature.

https://github.com/hholtmann/smcFanControl

https://github.com/lavoiesl/osx-cpu-temp

answered Jul 15 '19 at 09:33

dardo82

128

score 0 · Answer 14 · answered Feb 04 '22 at 20:05

Another new CLI tool that does this very well is iSMC: https://github.com/dkorunic/iSMC

Here's a screenshot of some of the output:

It doesn't show eGPU temperature, but that info exists in ioreg somewhere. You can extract some stats about your GPU/eGPU manually from ioreg with this:

ioreg -l | grep '"PerformanceStatistics"' | sed -E "s/,/\\n/g;s/\"//g" | grep -E "(temp|power|Device Utilization|Fan|speed|GPU Activity)"

If you have multiple GPUs their stats will be mixed. I select just my Vega 56 eGPU like this:

ioreg -c AMDRadeonX5000_AMDVega10GraphicsAccelerator -r -l | grep '"PerformanceStatistics"' | sed -E "s/,/\\n/g;s/\"//g" | grep -E "(temp|power|Device Utilization|Fan|speed|GPU Activity)"
...
Device Utilization %=7
Fan Speed(%)=0
GPU Activity(%)=16
Fan Speed(RPM)=0
Temperature(C)=36
Total Power(W)=35

Can I get the CPU temperature and fan speed from the command line in OS X?

14 Answers14

Installation

Usage

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