Fan Pilot Cool before it gets hot.
Fan Pilot is a small macOS app for your MacBook's fans. macOS waits until the chip is near its limit and slows it down instead of cooling it. Fan Pilot's Smart preset watches the chip and the case and spins the fans up early, so your Mac keeps its full speed.
Version 1.0 · macOS 14 or later · Apple Silicon and Intel MacBooks
Smart preset
Fans that move before the heat does.
Out of the box, macOS keeps the fans off until the chip reaches about 75 °C. Then it holds them at minimum speed until the chip is already at about 105 °C, and ramps up slowly. Thermal throttling starts before the fans reach full speed. The fans may be silent, but the back cover gets hot.
Smart sets fan speed from chip and case temperatures. It speeds up right away and slows down gently. If macOS reports any thermal pressure or the chip hits 100 °C, it goes straight to full speed. After a minute of being cool, it hands the fans back to macOS, and they go quiet again.
| Setting | Chip curve | Case curve | For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gentle | 75 → 98 °C | 42 → 55 °C | Quiet first, cooler than stock |
| Normal | 68 → 95 °C | 38 → 52 °C | The default balance |
| Aggressive | 60 → 90 °C | 35 → 48 °C | Lowest temperatures, more noise |
Each curve goes from 25 % to 100 % fan speed across its range. Fan speed follows whichever is highest: the chip curve, the case curve, or the minimum speed you set.
Measured
Same load, same Mac, no throttling.
A MacBook Pro with M4 Max on macOS 27, with High Power Mode on, which is Apple's most aggressive built-in cooling. All 16 CPU cores and the GPU were fully loaded for five minutes, and every SMC sensor was logged once per second. We ran stock macOS control, then Smart on default settings.
The trade-off: under long, heavy load Smart is louder. It ran the fans at full speed for most of the run, while macOS stopped at about 93 %. Gentle brings the noise down, and Aggressive goes further the other way.
| Metric | macOS, High Power Mode | Fan Pilot Smart |
|---|---|---|
| Thermal pressure (throttling) | from 121 s; 163 s at "heavy" | none |
| Peak chip temperature | 116 °C | 101 °C |
| Peak case (airflow) temperature | 64.8 °C | 53.7 °C |
| Fans above minimum after | 32 s | 17 s |
| Fans above 90 % after | 120 s | 60 s |
| Average chip, last 2 minutes | 96.4 °C | 94.6 °C |
| Top fan speed | ~5350 rpm (93 %) | 5777 rpm (100 %) |
Measured on 1 October 2026. Both fans start stopped (1350–5777 rpm range).
Presets
Four settings, one click apart.
Pick a preset from the popover and the fans follow it. Balanced and Max are percentages of each fan's top speed. You can set them anywhere from 20 % to 100 % in Edit Presets.
Auto
macOS in charge, exactly as if Fan Pilot were not installed.
Smart
Temperature-driven cooling with Gentle, Normal and Aggressive curves and an optional minimum speed.
Balanced
A steady 60 % by default. Good for long builds and renders.
Max
Every fan at 100 %, for when you want the heat gone now.
Menu bar or notch
Out of the Dock, and out of the way.
In the menu bar, Fan Pilot shows a fan icon whose lit blades show the current speed. Click it for live fan speeds and temperatures, the presets and the settings.
In notch mode, the icon sits right next to the notch and opens into a panel with the same controls. If no display with a notch is connected, for example with the lid closed, it moves to the menu bar. It returns to the notch automatically.
Safe by default
The fans go back to macOS whenever you leave.
Pick Auto, quit the app, or let it crash: in each case, macOS gets the fans back. Reading fan speeds needs no special rights. Setting them does, so the first time you pick a manual preset, Fan Pilot asks for an administrator password and installs a small helper, ru.fanyagin.fanpilot.helper.
On Macs whose fans stop at idle, switching to a manual preset takes about eight seconds. macOS first has to spin the fans up to their minimum speed.
# Remove the helper and settings
sudo launchctl bootout system/ru.fanyagin.fanpilot.helper
sudo rm /Library/LaunchDaemons/ru.fanyagin.fanpilot.helper.plist \
/Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/ru.fanyagin.fanpilot.helper
defaults delete ru.fanyagin.fanpilotGet Fan Pilot
A small native app for MacBook fans. No Dock icon, no account. Your Mac just runs cooler.
Requires macOS 14 or later · MacBook with Apple Silicon or Intel