Although MacOS takes care of cooling fan management automatically, there are specific scenarios where its approach may not be the most effective. Experienced users may find it useful to manually adjust the fan speed on their Apple Silicon Mac, especially on MacBook Pro models (note that the latest MacBook Air models don’t have a fan at all).

One of the key advantages of manually adjusting fan speeds on MacBook Pro models is the ability to avoid overheating in situations where your laptop is likely to overheat—such as when you're using it outdoors under direct sunlight, even on relatively cool days. Some users may also want to increase fan speed to achieve higher RPMs during activities like gaming, working with LLMs, or rendering, which could enhance the performance of certain applications or games.

As we enter the warmer months in the northern hemisphere, many MacBook Pro users may be tempted to take their devices outside. However, even on a moderately warm 60° day, a MacBook Pro can easily overheat if used in direct sunlight. While there are multiple tips to keep your Mac cool in hot weather, one of the most straightforward approaches is to use a fan control app that lets you manually adjust fan speed. This allows you to run the fans at full speed right away in warm conditions, instead of waiting for your Mac to heat up before the fans kick in. The app we recommend for this is called Macs Fan Control, which is compatible with all Apple Silicon Macs that have fans.

• Download Macs Fan Control from the official site (or from Github) – it's free

Macs Fan Control is free to download and straightforward to operate.

In my personal experience with this app, I set the fans to maximum speed whenever I'm using my Mac outside in direct sunlight—even on cooler days—as a preventive measure to keep the device running as cool as possible. If you also use a temperature monitoring app to check internal temperatures, you'll notice that higher fan speeds help maintain lower internal temperatures.

Keep in mind, this fan control method only works on Apple Silicon Macs that have a cooling fan, such as MacBook Pro models and most desktop Macs. It won’t work on MacBook Air models, which no longer have a cooling fan (making the modern MacBook Air less suitable for those who regularly work outdoors in sunny conditions, such as field researchers, although it remains an excellent laptop for most other uses).

However, hot weather isn’t the only scenario where Macs Fan Control proves useful. You can also boost the fan speed manually to keep your hardware cool during CPU-intensive tasks. For instance, if you're an advanced user running a local LLM or a resource-heavy game, you might want to set the fan speed to maximum. If you have plenty of RAM, you could even pair this with manually increasing VRAM allocation to optimize performance for LLMs, GPU-intensive games, or other heavy processes.

While we're focusing on Apple Silicon Macs here, Macs Fan Control also works on Intel-based Macs. So if you have an older Intel Mac that tends to overheat, it might be worth trying out. And for those with older Mac OS X systems or vintage Intel Macs, there's a similar utility called SMCFanControl (which we wrote about back in 2007) that allows you to control fan speeds.

Just be sure to reset the Macs Fan Control settings back to "Auto" once you're done with your specific use case, to avoid putting unnecessary and prolonged stress on the fans. While I've never heard of a Mac fan failing from normal use, mechanical components can wear out over time, so use such tools responsibly.

Do you ever tweak your Mac's fan speed manually to manage temperature, or do you prefer to leave it to MacOS? What situations do you typically find it useful to increase your Mac's fan speed? Feel free to share your thoughts, experiences, and insights in the comments below!

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