The best Mac temperature monitor apps

Short answer: macOS has no built-in temperature readout, so you need a small app to see how hot your Mac is. If you want to watch everything in your menu bar, iStat Menus is the complete one and Stats is the best free pick. If you want a deep sensor list with rules, TG Pro is the deepest. And if you would rather see the one temperature that matters and have the fans actually respond to it, that is what I built ChillBlades for. I make one of these apps, so I will say plainly where mine is the wrong choice. The honest split is whether you want to watch the temperature or also act on it.

Looking in Activity Monitor? It does not show temperature. Activity Monitor shows CPU load, how busy the chip is, not how hot it is. For what it does show, and how to get to it, see the guide to Activity Monitor on a Mac. macOS gives you no built-in temperature readout at all. To see degrees you need one of the apps below, or the Terminal route in the how-to guide.

At a glance

All five read your Mac's temperature, but they aim at different people. The quick version is whether you only want to watch the numbers, or you want something that reacts to them. Here is the summary before the detail.

Prices and tiers change, so treat the price column as the shape of each model rather than an exact figure. If you want to know what the numbers you are about to watch actually mean, the pillar on how hot is too hot for a Mac covers the safe range and where throttling begins.

People searching for Mac thermal management utilities usually mean one of two things: something that tells them how hot the Mac is, or something that does something about it. Every app on this page does the telling. Reading stops being enough at a particular moment, and it is easy to recognize: you are watching the number climb past 95°C, the fans are barely audible, and there is nothing in the app you can press. That is the point you want an app that can move the fans itself, and those get their own round-up: Mac fan control apps.

iStat Menus

iStat Menus is the complete one. It is a paid app with a one-time license, it runs on Apple Silicon and Intel, and it is the most thorough menu-bar system monitor you can buy. If your goal is to watch your Mac, this is the pick.

It puts CPU and GPU temperatures, fan speeds, processor load, memory, disk and network activity all in the menu bar, with graphs and history. It is monitoring first, and it is very good at it. It does include some fan control as a feature, but driving the fans is not its main job; seeing everything at once is. If you want a system temperature monitor for your Mac that also tells you what every other part is doing, iStat Menus is the natural choice and worth the one-time price.

Where it is more than you need is if all you actually want is to keep the Mac cool. A full dashboard is a lot of screen for one job. If you mostly want to watch, this is the strong pick; if you want something that reacts to the heat for you, read on.

Stats

Stats is the best free pick, and the one I point people to when budget is zero. It is free, open source, runs natively on Apple Silicon, and lives in the menu bar showing CPU and GPU temperatures, fan speeds and load.

For a free Mac temperature monitor it is genuinely good. It is actively maintained, it handles M-series Macs properly, and the menu-bar widget is clean and configurable. If you want to glance up and see your CPU temperature without paying anything, this is the one to install. It is monitoring only, so it will not change your fan speeds, but as a free CPU temperature monitor for a Mac it does the job well.

The trade-off against iStat Menus is polish and breadth: iStat Menus shows more and presents it more nicely, Stats shows the essentials for free. If free matters most and you want a menu-bar temperature reading, Stats is the answer.

TG Pro

TG Pro is the one that goes furthest. It is a paid app with a one-time license, it runs on Apple Silicon and Intel, and it is stronger than anything else here on sensors and on control together.

Its sensor list goes well past CPU and GPU: the drives, the battery, and plenty besides, all readable on one screen. On top of the monitoring it adds rule-based fan control, so you can set thresholds and let it respond rather than only reading the numbers. That is what puts it in both camps at once, a detailed temperature monitor and a fan controller, and it is the reason to pick it if depth is what you are after.

The flip side is that the depth is the point, and not everyone wants a sensor dashboard plus a rules engine. If the detail appeals, TG Pro earns its place. If it sounds like a lot for "I just want my Mac cooler", that is the gap ChillBlades fills, and I go through the trade-offs in ChillBlades compared with TG Pro.

Macs Fan Control

Macs Fan Control is the capable free middle ground. The core is free, it runs on Apple Silicon and Intel, and it does both jobs to a point: it shows your Mac's sensor readings and lets you set fan speeds by hand or tie them to a sensor.

As a free monitor it shows you the temperatures, and unlike a pure dashboard it can also act on them, manually, if you set it up. There is a paid tier for extras like saved presets, but the basics are free. It looks like a tool rather than a product, and the sensor mapping is something you configure yourself; it will not decide the curve for you.

Against ChillBlades the split is straightforward. Macs Fan Control wins on price and on raw monitoring breadth; ChillBlades is simpler to set and forget and is a paid app rather than a free one with a paid tier. If free monitoring with optional manual control is what you want, this fits. If you are choosing between the two, there is a full head-to-head comparison.

ChillBlades

I will be upfront: I make ChillBlades, and as a monitor it is the weakest thing on this page. One temperature, no sensor list, no per-core breakdown, no history and no graphs. If you want a dashboard to watch, it is the wrong pick and I would point you at iStat Menus or Stats instead. ChillBlades is not a system monitor; it is a fan controller that shows you the one number it makes decisions from.

That number is a deliberate choice worth explaining, because it is the one monitoring opinion I do hold. ChillBlades reads the hottest single CPU or GPU die sensor, polled every two seconds, and shows the maximum rather than an average. Pure monitors tend to average across the die, which is the right call when your job is to describe what the chip is doing. It is the wrong call when your job is to cool it, because the hottest core is the one that decides whether the Mac throttles, and averaging hides it behind the cool cores sitting idle next to it. Max, not mean, is the reading a controller should act on.

The rest is short. It is a menu-bar app that needs macOS 13 or later, works on Apple Silicon or Intel, and needs a Mac that actually has fans; on a fanless one it tells you so and stops. Custom mode gives each fan a slider across its real minimum and maximum, clamped in hardware. Auto Boost is the hands-off option: pick one temperature band, Warm at 80°C, Hot at 90°C, or Very hot at 100°C, and one fan speed, and the fans spin up when the Mac reaches it, then ease off about 3°C below. One band out of those three and one speed, not a curve you draw.

So where it fits is the "watch versus act" split. The other four are about seeing the numbers; ChillBlades is about the numbers changing what the fans do. It also handles the newer M3 and M4 fan-control mechanism that some older utilities miss. It costs around $25 once, no subscription, with a seven-day trial that needs no card, and a clean quit hands every fan back to macOS. macOS still protects the chip regardless of any app. The walkthrough for setting it up lives in how to control Mac fans.

Menu bar, widget, or Terminal?

There is more than one place to see the temperature, and the right one depends on how often you want to glance at it.

A menu-bar reading is the most useful for most people: a live number in the top bar you can see without opening anything. iStat Menus, Stats, Macs Fan Control and ChillBlades all show one. A desktop or Notification Center widget is what some monitors add on top, handy if you want the temperature visible without the menu bar getting crowded; iStat Menus and Stats are the ones to look at there. And the Terminal route needs no app at all: a built-in command can print a sensor figure on demand, which is fine for a one-off check but not for watching over time. That free no-app method is in how to check your Mac's temperature.

If the temperature you are watching is really just a runaway process heating the Mac up, it can help to know what it is. Two of the usual suspects are covered in what WindowServer is and why kernel_task shows high CPU.

How to choose

Start with the honest question: do you want to watch the temperature, or also act on it?

If you mostly want to watch, pick by budget and breadth. iStat Menus is the complete paid dashboard if you want CPU and GPU temps alongside everything else your Mac is doing. Stats is the free pick that covers the essentials, and it is the one I would start with if you do not want to pay. For a genuinely free, no-app check, the Terminal route reads a sensor on demand.

If you also want something to act on the heat, the choice changes. TG Pro is the deep tool, full sensors plus granular rules, for people who enjoy the detail. ChillBlades is the focused one: it shows the hottest die temperature and drives the fans from it, with one Auto Boost band rather than a dashboard. If you specifically want to drive the fans rather than read them, what each fan control app can actually set is compared in detail on the other page. Either way, what the numbers mean is in the pillar on Mac temperatures and throttling.

About this guide

ChillBlades is mine, and it is one of the five apps above, so weigh what I say about it accordingly. I have graded it against the others rather than around them: as a monitor it is the thinnest thing here, iStat Menus is the complete dashboard, Stats is the better free choice, and ChillBlades only earns its place if you want the temperature that matters to drive the fans. Capability claims about the four apps I do not make were checked against their own documentation in July 2026, and tiers shift, so the pricing is described as a shape rather than a figure. macOS keeps the chip safe no matter which of these you install. Last reviewed July 25, 2026.

FAQ

Does macOS have a built-in temperature monitor?

No. macOS does not ship a temperature readout anywhere in the system, not in Activity Monitor, not in System Settings, not in the menu bar. The sensors are there on the chip, but Apple gives you no built-in way to see them. To read your Mac's temperature you either run a Terminal command that talks to the sensors, or you install a small app that does the reading for you. That gap is the whole reason these apps exist.

Can Activity Monitor show CPU temperature?

No. Activity Monitor shows CPU load, which is how busy the processor is as a percentage, not CPU temperature, which is how hot it is in degrees. The two are related but not the same: a Mac can sit at high load and stay cool, or run a short heavy task and get warm fast. If you opened Activity Monitor looking for a temperature, that is why you could not find one. You need a temperature monitor app or the Terminal route instead.

What is the best free Mac temperature monitor?

Stats is the one I would point most people to. It is free, open source, runs natively on Apple Silicon, and puts CPU and GPU temperatures, fan speeds and load in your menu bar. If you would rather not install anything at all, you can read a sensor figure from the Terminal for nothing, which I walk through in the guide on how to check your Mac's temperature. Both cost nothing; Stats is the nicer day-to-day option.

Do these apps work on Apple Silicon and M1, M2, M3 and M4 Macs?

Yes. Stats, iStat Menus, TG Pro, Macs Fan Control and ChillBlades all read temperatures on Apple Silicon, from M1 through the current generation, as well as on Intel Macs. The one thing worth checking on the newest M3 and M4 machines is fan control rather than monitoring: some older utilities read the sensors fine but fail to drive the fans on the current mechanism. ChillBlades handles that newer mechanism, which is part of why I built it.