Does Activity Monitor show CPU temperature?

No. Activity Monitor shows CPU and GPU usage, memory pressure, energy impact, and which apps are working the hardest, but it never shows a temperature in degrees. People often check it expecting to find one and come away thinking macOS hides the number. It does not show it anywhere in the standard interface. To see an actual temperature you need either a Terminal command or a third-party app that reads the sensors directly.

Is there a Terminal command to see my Mac temperature?

There is, but it is not friendly. The usual route is sudo powermetrics, which needs an administrator password, prints a wall of system stats, and runs in repeating bursts rather than a steady live readout. Which sensors it surfaces, and the exact labels, vary by chip and macOS version, so the temperature you want is not always obvious in the output. It works for a one-off check, but it is heavy for something you want to glance at while you work.

What is a safe temperature for my Mac?

There is no single safe number, because Apple Silicon is built to run across a wide range. The 40s and 50s in Celsius during everyday work are normal, and the 80s and low 90s under sustained heavy load are normal too. Your Mac protects itself long before heat does any harm. The fuller breakdown of which bands mean what is in my guide on how hot is too hot for a Mac.

Is 84°C too hot for a Mac CPU?

No, 84°C is within the normal range for Apple Silicon under load. The chip is built to run into the 80s and low 90s in Celsius during sustained heavy work, and it only starts slowing itself down to shed heat as it nears around 100°C. So a Mac sitting at 84°C while it compiles, exports or runs a game is behaving as designed, not overheating. If it parks there for a long time, a little airflow keeps it from climbing further, but nothing is at risk.

How often does ChillBlades update the temperature reading?

Every two seconds. The hottest CPU or GPU reading sits at the top of the ChillBlades window and refreshes on that interval, so you get a live sense of how hard the machine is being pushed without having to run a command or read through pages of output. The sensor data stays on your Mac and is never sent anywhere.

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How to check your Mac's temperature

Short answer: macOS does not show you a temperature anywhere in its interface, and Activity Monitor does not either. The sensors are there inside the machine, but Apple keeps the readings off-screen. To see how hot your Mac is actually running you have to go and get the number yourself, either with a Terminal command, a third-party menu-bar app that shows a live reading, or ChillBlades, which puts the hottest CPU or GPU temperature at the top of its window and refreshes it every two seconds. This guide walks through each route honestly, including what each one shows and what it costs you, and points you to what the numbers mean once you have them.

The methods at a glance

There is no single right way to check, only trade-offs between effort and convenience. Here is how the main routes compare.

Method	What it shows	Effort or notes
Activity Monitor	CPU and GPU usage, energy impact. No temperature at all.	Built in, but it cannot answer this question.
Terminal (powermetrics)	System stats including some sensor temperatures, depending on chip and macOS.	Needs an admin password, runs in bursts, output is dense and varies by machine.
Third-party menu-bar app	A live temperature reading, usually in the menu bar.	Install once, then it is always visible. Quality and accuracy vary by app.
ChillBlades	The hottest CPU or GPU reading at the top of its window, refreshing every two seconds.	A fan-control app first, so it also lets you act on the heat, not just watch it.

Why Activity Monitor will not tell you

This is where most people start, and it is a dead end. Activity Monitor is excellent at showing what is using your CPU, how much memory is under pressure, and which apps are draining the battery. None of that is a temperature. There is no degrees column hidden in a menu, and no preference to switch one on. Apple simply does not expose the thermal sensors through it.

That is worth saying plainly, because the search that brings people here is often "Activity Monitor temperature" and the honest answer is that it does not have one. If a high CPU figure is what made you curious, that usually does line up with a warmer chip, but to put a real number on the heat you have to look elsewhere. If you want to understand why the machine is running hot in the first place, I cover the common causes in why your Mac runs hot.

The Terminal route, honestly

macOS does ship a command that can surface sensor data. The usual one is sudo powermetrics, run from Terminal. Because it reads low-level system information it needs an administrator password, and rather than giving you one tidy number it prints a long block of statistics and then keeps repeating that block on an interval until you stop it. It is a sampler, not a dashboard.

I want to be careful not to overstate what you will see. Which thermal samplers are available, and the exact labels they print, vary by chip and by macOS version, so the temperature you are after is not always obvious in the wall of output, and on some machines a given reading may not appear at all. Treat it as a way to take a one-off look under the hood rather than a comfortable way to keep an eye on things. It works, it is built in, and it costs you nothing but patience and an admin prompt.

For a single spot-check before a long task, that may be all you need. For watching the temperature while you actually do the work, running a command in bursts and reading through dense output every couple of seconds is not it, which is why most people who care about the number reach for something that just shows it.

Menu-bar apps that show a live reading

The category most people end up in is a small app that reads the sensors and puts a live temperature where you can see it, usually in the menu bar. Install it once, give it whatever permission it asks for, and from then on the number is just there while you work. No password each time, no command to remember, no output to parse.

Quality varies, and so does which sensor an app decides to show, so two apps can disagree by a few degrees depending on what they read. The useful thing they all share is that they turn an occasional investigation into an at-a-glance habit. Once the temperature is visible, you start to notice the pattern: where it sits during ordinary work, and how high it climbs when you push the machine. To know whether a given number is fine or not, the bands in how hot is too hot for a Mac are the reference I would use.

How ChillBlades shows it, and why that is the point

ChillBlades is a fan-control app first, but to control fans sensibly it has to read the heat, so it shows you the temperature too. The hottest CPU or GPU reading sits at the top of its window and refreshes every two seconds, which is enough to feel the machine respond as you load it up and let it cool down. It runs on Apple Silicon, from the M1 through the current chips, as well as Intel Macs, on macOS 13 and later. The sensor data stays on your Mac. The only times it talks to the network are to check your license and to look for a new version.

The reason I think a reading is more useful inside a fan-control app than on its own is that seeing the number is only half the story. The other half is being able to do something about it. macOS holds the fans back until the chip is already hot, then ramps them late. ChillBlades lets you set each fan by hand, or turn on Auto Boost so the fans spin up the moment your Mac reaches a band you choose, Warm at 80°C, Hot at 90°C, or Very hot at 100°C, and ease off as it cools. That moves the watching and the acting into one place.

One honest caveat: the fan-control part needs a Mac that has fans. On a fanless MacBook Air there is nothing to spin, so it tells you "No fans found". The app is $30 once, with a seven-day trial and no card needed, and the fan side asks you to approve a privileged helper one time in System Settings. When you quit, every fan goes straight back to macOS automatic control. The quick questions are answered in the FAQs, and if you would rather start from the fan side, I walk through it in controlling your Mac's fans.

About this guide

This is written by the maker of ChillBlades, a Mac fan control app. I have tried to be straight about the trade-offs rather than steer you to the app: the Terminal route genuinely works and costs nothing, and a good menu-bar reader will show you the number perfectly well. Where I hold back is on exact command output, because it shifts between chips and macOS versions and I would rather hedge than have you trust a label that is not on your machine. Whatever you use to read the temperature, your Mac protects itself regardless.

FAQ

Does Activity Monitor show CPU temperature?: No. Activity Monitor shows CPU and GPU usage, memory pressure, energy impact, and which apps are working the hardest, but it never shows a temperature in degrees. People often check it expecting to find one and come away thinking macOS hides the number. It does not show it anywhere in the standard interface. To see an actual temperature you need either a Terminal command or a third-party app that reads the sensors directly.
Is there a Terminal command to see my Mac temperature?: There is, but it is not friendly. The usual route is sudo powermetrics, which needs an administrator password, prints a wall of system stats, and runs in repeating bursts rather than a steady live readout. Which sensors it surfaces, and the exact labels, vary by chip and macOS version, so the temperature you want is not always obvious in the output. It works for a one-off check, but it is heavy for something you want to glance at while you work.
What is a safe temperature for my Mac?: There is no single safe number, because Apple Silicon is built to run across a wide range. The 40s and 50s in Celsius during everyday work are normal, and the 80s and low 90s under sustained heavy load are normal too. Your Mac protects itself long before heat does any harm. The fuller breakdown of which bands mean what is in my guide on how hot is too hot for a Mac.
Is 84°C too hot for a Mac CPU?: No, 84°C is within the normal range for Apple Silicon under load. The chip is built to run into the 80s and low 90s in Celsius during sustained heavy work, and it only starts slowing itself down to shed heat as it nears around 100°C. So a Mac sitting at 84°C while it compiles, exports or runs a game is behaving as designed, not overheating. If it parks there for a long time, a little airflow keeps it from climbing further, but nothing is at risk.
How often does ChillBlades update the temperature reading?: Every two seconds. The hottest CPU or GPU reading sits at the top of the ChillBlades window and refreshes on that interval, so you get a live sense of how hard the machine is being pushed without having to run a command or read through pages of output. The sensor data stays on your Mac and is never sent anywhere.