How can I find what is making my Mac run hotter and causing the fans to run more often?

Question

My Macbook Pro's fans are running louder. I've also noticed that the average internal temperature is significantly higher. (187°F as I write this.) This didn't used to happen unless I was running full-screen video or recording multitrack audio. I've made no other changes to the computer that I can remember.

Recently, I turned on Spaces, and I thought that perhaps leaving these open was running the processor more heavily, creating more heat. But turning Spaces back off didn't help.

How can I see what background processes are running? Is there a way to track this down?

Have posted a followup question on the Android site: What happens when you kill the Samsung Kies Wifi Agent? — Goodbye Stack Exchange, Feb 15 '12 at 18:08

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 15 '12 at 17:37

4

You can use Activity Monitor to view all the processes running on your Mac at any time. If you prefer to use the terminal, you can use top.

answered Feb 15 '12 at 17:37

jaberg

9,849

That did it; the Kies wifi monitor was gobbling up a gigabyte of RAM. I killed the process and the temperature went down to 117°F. Will look into how to remove it permenantly. – Goodbye Stack Exchange Feb 15 '12 at 17:57
Glad I could help. The wifi monitor might be loaded at login. – jaberg Feb 15 '12 at 18:06
You sure that's the right link? – Goodbye Stack Exchange Feb 15 '12 at 18:07
It wasn't. It's fixed now. You can skip the first paragraph of the linked answer. – jaberg Feb 15 '12 at 18:10
Thanks for that link; I found another file there that's associated with Kies; I disabled that one as well. The Galaxy Tab is an awesome machine, but Samsung's Mac software isn't as good. – Goodbye Stack Exchange Feb 15 '12 at 18:16

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

1

iStat Pro (free)

...allows you to monitor various stats about the hardware.

You can toggle between top CPU hogging and top RAM hogging processes:

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edited Jun 15 '20 at 08:04

Community

1

answered Feb 15 '12 at 20:00

gentmatt

49,722

The website does not seem to be active anymore. – Darmen Amanbay Aug 07 '21 at 19:41

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 16 '12 at 08:47

While we are talking about system process monitors like Apple Activity Monitor, let me mention that Bresink's free

Temperature Monitor

is useful to track all the various heat sensors in your system and to record graphs of readings over time. In conjunction with Activity Monitor, top or iStat Pro you can observe the correlation between active processes and CPU core temperatures.

How can I find what is making my Mac run hotter and causing the fans to run more often?

3 Answers3

iStat Pro (free)

Temperature Monitor