May 4th, 2006
MacBook Pro Temperature Monitor
There is now a way to read the internal temperature of the MacBook Pro, something no other software has been able to do to date. A creative developer has figured out a way to get data from the internal monitors via a kernel extension (kext).
To install the "speedit" kernel extension:
1. Download the speedit DMG from Increw.org (direct download, mirror).
2. Mount the DMG and move the speedit.kext to your user folder.
3. Start Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal)
4. Terminal should drop you in your home directory by default:
(user$)
If not, move to the directory that contains "speedit.kext" using the cd command. For example:
% cd /Users/admin/Projects/Speedit
5. Once there, use the ls command to view the contents of this directory and confirm that the speedit.kext is there. For example:
% ls
speedit.kext
6. If it’s there, type:
sudo chown -R root:wheel speedit.kext
7. After Terminal lectures you about security, enter your admin password
8. Then enter:
sudo kextload -v speedit.kext
If all went well, you should see this message:
kextload: speedit.kext loaded successfully
Once the kext is loaded you can enter this command to get the temperature in Celsius:
sysctl kern.cpu_temp
There are other commands that you can run (they’re in the README.txt file), but none of them seemed to give any results on my MacBook Pro 2.0GHz. You can report errors to the InCrew forums.
Interrupting Moss from the SomethingAwful forums reports that after reapplying the thermal grease on his MBP he gets temperature readings of:
48C idle 64C at 100% on both cores (while encoding a DVD.)
Others with the original thermal grease application are reporting temperatures as high as:
65C idle 85C at 100% on both cores
One user is reporting:
71C idle 95C under full load
(All we need now is for some enterprising developer to hack this thing into a neat little application that will display this information in a tiny appliation (NOT a dashboard widget, please!) or even better a small menu bar item. - Any takers?)
If you try the speedit kext on your MacBook Pro, please post your results in the TalkBack below!
Jason D. O'Grady is the editor of PowerPage.org, which has been publishing daily mobile technology news since December 1995. For disclosures on Jason's industry affiliations, click here or to view Jason's full profile click here.
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