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).

Answer 1

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:

Answer 2

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

Installation

$ gem install iStats

Usage

$ istats all

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

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

Answer 5

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

Answer 6

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.

Answer 7

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.

1. 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
   

2. 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.

Answer 8

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.

Answer 9

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.

Answer 10

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'

Answer 11

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

Answer 12

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

Answer 13

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

Answer 14

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