Mac OS X 10.11: Provide an API to get CPU temperature and fan speed

Originator:craig.hockenberry
Number:rdar://23078705 Date Originated:12-Oct-2015 03:19 PM
Status:Open Resolved:
Product:OS X Product Version:Mac OS X 10.11 (15A282b)
Classification:Enhancement Reproducible:Always
 
IOPMCopyBatteryInfo() can be used to get a dictionary with information about the current battery status.

A similar API to get temperature information for the sensor closest to the CPU and fan rotation speed would be very helpful for those of us who:

1) Live in a warmer climate without air conditioning.
2) Push their laptop with things like Xcode builds, media decoding/encoding, and other compute intensive tasks.
3) All of the above.

This information can currently only be read using private APIs that dig around in the “AppleSMC” IOService. This, of course, won’t work in a sandbox. This prevents apps that want to provide this information from being in the Mac App Store.

Elevated permissions are also required to access the SMC information in the IO Registry. And users who want to keep an eye on thermal conditions will happily run apps outside of the sandbox that do this. The lack of an API here creates a security risk as a side effect.

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