Thermal monitoring app Hot now shows your M1 Mac temperature and (lack of) throttling

Macbook Air M1 (Image credit: iMore)

What you need to know

Thermal monitoring app Hot has been updated to add Apple M1 support.
The app will show how fast your CPU is running and whether it's being throttled as a result of heat.

Popular thermal monitoring app Hot has been updated to add support for M1 Macs, including the new M1 iMac and other similarly speedy machines.

The update, which is available for download now and doesn't cost a penny, can display how hot your M1 chip has become as well as its current rate of throttling. Spoiler – it doesn't seem to throttle, even in the most toasty of portable machines.

From our MacBook Air review:

There's no more deciding which variant of Intel's inefficient Core CPUs would overheat inside this narrow chassis (as many MacBook Air owners complained about over the last two years). Instead, the M1, built on a 5nm manufacturing process, is so efficient and outputs such little heat, that Apple felt it reasonable to remove the damn fan.

Now run the same test on an Intel MacBook Air or MacBook Pro and weep as you see that performance graph drop as the temperature rises.

Hot M1 Screenshot (Image credit: iMazing)

Apple's M1 chips have been lauded for their speed, but it's their continued strong performance even when hot that puts them head and shoulders above Intel's chips for many people. Apple's portable machines have long suffered from varying degrees of thermal throttling at load, but there are no such problems with M1 Macs and, presumably, we shouldn't expect any with future Apple silicon machines either.

Want to taste a little bit of that M1 magic for yourself? Check out our list of the best MacBook deals and see if you can snag yourself an Apple silicon bargain!

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.