Why does my MacBook Air M4 heat up so quickly?

KiltedTim wrote:

Exactly how are you measuring the temperature?

The best native measurement I can find without installing a third party app is a command that you run in the Terminal app. The command is "sudo powermetrics -s thermal -n 1".

I get the result Nominal and the full set of answers is Nominal, Fair, Serious or Critical.

What programs did you use to measure it?

My paid iStatistica program shows 96 degrees Celsius after starting my MacBook in a room with air conditioning. Other programs do the same, showing 80-90 degrees Celsius on the processors when the computer is actually cold to the touch :D

Download "Macs Fan Control" for free from the website and "State" from the App Store – these programs work well with M processors.

The "State" program shows 38-40 degrees Celsius during everyday use, just like "Macs Fan Control," not 90 degrees Celsius like iStatistica Pro :D

I also use the Macs Fan Control and use the "CPU Core Average" sensor in Fahrenheit degrees. I also have no background apps running, especially Clean My Mac, which I discovered was the main contributor to high temp readings. I now am seeing 91 degree F readings in Mac Fan Control versus 170 degree+ readings before!

Others have discovered that the message app consumes a lot of cpu and causes the air to run hot. Check the usage in activity monitor, kill the message process and see if anything changes

I have a m2 air and upgraded to the m4 air recently as I was pleased with the battery life and had no heating issue like windows laptops, I discovered the overheating issue started to show up when i enabled apple intelligence and turning it off showed immediate results. Also to minimize further you can turn off background items on your settings and turn off location as well.

I also just bought an M4 Air, and compared to my other M2 Air, I also found that the displayed temperature is slightly higher than my M2's.

I also checked the overall energy consumption and CPU utilization, and found that even under normal circumstances, the idle CPU of this M4 is not as good as that of the M2, so it is obviously running in the background, occupying CPU resources and causing AIR to generate more heat than M2.

[Edited by Moderator]

Just tried to migrate from M1 Air to M4.

I need a bigger screen for vim (2 columns + explorer + panel on the right side) and 13" is not enough.

I have bought 15" M4 32GB/2TB and I can't use it.

M4 much hotter than M1, much more than I can tolerate.

On the screenshot, you can see temperature metrics after running dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/zero on M1 (also with browsers and a lot of running software) and M4 (zero setup with only open Safari app).

why they don't care about tempreature?

I'll be back on the M1 and have continued my search for fanless laptops with a good screen and comfortable operating temperature.

Fatalicious wrote:

I’m experiencing the same issue. My brand new MacBook M4 15" frequently overheats, especially when using Figma or Photoshop. Temperatures regularly reach around 60°C, and can spike up to 80°C if the room temperature is above 25°C. This is a serious concern.

80C is not seriously hot if it is a short duration spike. 90C is at which point the CPU will begin throttling until it cools down.

CPU cores, whether Apple or Intel are rated to 95-100C max temp.

Exactly how are you measuring the temperature?

I have disabled the background running applications setting and now my M4 is not overheating any more when getting out of idle state :) I think this may be a Sequoia bug ....

I this can help

Ajmaljalal wrote:

Is there someone from Apple to provide some feedback here. I have the same issue with my.

This is a support forum for other users to try and help each other. You should use the Support link at the top of the page next to the search icon if you want to talk to someone from Apple.

Hello

same problem with my new MBA M4, and my previous MBA M2 was not hot at all.

I can say that my MBA overheats when doing nothing and be not used (for example at night). If I am using it again, browsing, even playing some Steam games or doing some c++/rust compilation tasks, it does not overheat.

Additionnally, I am using now a static screensaver because I thought the problem was coming was coming from dynamic wallpapers.

Anyway, this does not seem to be the root cause.

Do you think it is hardware or software problem linked to low power mode ? At the time I am writing this message, the temperature is normal again ... no overheat versus the moment I got it out of idle state.

Best Regards

FWIW, my recently purchased M4 MacBook Air with 24GB RAM and 512GB SSD runs on average about 3-4 C hotter under normal use than my M1 MacBook Air with 8GB RAM and 512GB SSD. when under heavy use, it actually is a 4-5 C cooler than the M1.

Downloaded Fan Control from their website and, since the M4 MBAir has no fan, no temperature data can be or is provided! This Program does not help at all...and the "State" program is all in Chinese!!! No help here either...My "Clean My Mac" program reports a 183 degree F temp, which is high. So the question still remains unanswered...why is the M4 MBAir running hot/warm.. any background apps, including my VPN, are OFF!