How to View Your Mac’s CPU Temperature

Modern MacBooks with Apple Silicon (M-series chips) run incredibly cool, often operating without a fan spinning at all. However, if you are pushing your machine to its absolute limits—rendering a complex 4K video project, compiling a massive codebase, or running resource-heavy virtual machines—you might notice the chassis getting uncomfortably warm. If you are using an older Intel-based Mac, thermal throttling is a much more common concern.

While macOS does not display the CPU temperature anywhere in the standard graphical interface (not even in the Activity Monitor), you do not actually need to install a paid, third-party utility menu bar app just to check your thermals. Apple includes powerful diagnostic tools built directly into the macOS Terminal.

This guide explains how to view your Mac’s CPU temperature using the native command-line interface.

Checking Temperature on Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3) Macs

If you own a modern Mac with an Apple Silicon processor, the most accurate way to measure thermals is using the built-in powermetrics tool. This command requires administrative privileges to run.

1. Open the Terminal app. You can find it by pressing Command + Space to open Spotlight Search, typing “Terminal”, and pressing Enter.
2. Carefully type or paste the following command into the terminal:

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

3. Press Enter.
4. Because this is a sudo command, the terminal will ask for your Mac login password. Type it in (the characters will not appear on screen for security reasons) and press Enter.

The terminal will begin querying the System Management Controller (SMC). Every few seconds, it will print a new line showing the live CPU die temperature in Celsius (e.g., CPU die temperature: 45.32 C).

To stop the live readout, press Control + C on your keyboard.

Checking Temperature on Intel Macs

If you are using an older MacBook Pro or iMac powered by an Intel processor, the powermetrics command above might not return the correct data. Instead, you can use the sysctl utility to query the thermal state.

1. Open the Terminal app.
2. Type the following command:

   sysctl -n machdep.xcpm.cpu_thermal_level

3. Press Enter.

Unlike the Apple Silicon command, this will not give you a precise temperature in degrees Celsius. Instead, it returns a simple integer representing the thermal danger level:

• 0: Normal operation (Cool).
• 100: The CPU is running hot, and fans will likely spin up to maximum speed to compensate.
• 100+: The CPU has exceeded safe limits and is actively thermal throttling (slowing itself down) to prevent physical hardware damage.