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There are extremely useful utilities like iStats for viewing the CPU temperature on a device running macOS.

Is there a way to view the current CPU temperature of an iPhone?

Note: the reason I want this info is because an app I regularly use runs some very heavy processes which heat up the phone to very hot temperatures in around 15 minutes. I would like to be able to take the phone's temperature before and after 15 minutes of using that app.

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  • The OS is designed to manage the heat for you. You don't have to do anything.
    – benwiggy
    Jun 14 at 6:45
  • @benwiggy I think the OP just wants to know the temperature.
    – Thinkr
    Jun 14 at 7:16
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    @Thinkr Yup. The question was motivated by the chess dot com iPhone app causing the iPhone to get so hot it was almost painful to hold firmly for more than a few seconds. I suspected it was running a chess engine in the background, (possibly to detect cheating), which presumably was very compute intensive. I hoped to include exact temperature changes in a bug report.
    – stevec
    Jun 14 at 7:53
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    Maybe that could be located in Settings > Privacy & Security > Analytics & Improvements > Analytics Data?
    – Thinkr
    Jun 14 at 8:10
  • The CPU temp is diagnostically irrelevant here because no App accesses the CPU directly. The temp is a direct result of increased CPU utilization and ambient temperature which is outside the purview of the app. A much, much more useful metric would be CPU utilization in the crash/diagnostic log.
    – Allan
    Jun 15 at 20:40

2 Answers 2

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Some apps may show you what you're looking for, but I'm going to explain to you how to use two helpful tools to see your iPhone's temperature, the infrared thermometer and the thermal camera.

Infrared thermometer

With this tool, you can measure the temperature at different spots on your iPhone such as ones that heat up most (battery, screen, CPU and camera sensors).

How to use it

Start by turning on both your infrared thermometer and you iPhone. Then, point the thermometer towards the wanted spots and slowly move the thermometer around the phone to measure temperature at desired places. Don't forget to cover the whole parts you want to measure to get the overall temperature (i.e. whole screen).

Picture of an infrared thermometer from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1024_Pyrometer-8445.jpg

Thermal camera

The thermal camera (also known as thermal imaging camera or TIC) works similarly to the infrared thermometer but it shows a more accurate temperature measurement and temperature visualization with hot/cold colors. It basically renders infrared radiation as visible light.

How to use it

First, turn on both your thermal camera and your iPhone. Then, point the camera towards the wanted spots to know their temperature. You'll also see which parts of the iPhone are the hottest by looking at the thermal image produced.

Picture of a thermal camera measuring temperature / getting thermal image of a house

Of course, both those tools aren't available for free but I've seen some reasonable offers online (to me).

If you're worried about your iPhone overheating, check out If your iPhone or iPad gets too hot or too cold for what to do.

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There's a lot of temperature information in sysdiagnose in iOS, might be a good place to start.

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