CPU temp stuck

[connor-brooks]

Hey,

I'm running osx-cpu-temp on Catalina (10.15.2) on a 2015 MacBook Pro 13".

Recently I have noticed that temperatures only update whilst my Mac is connected to power.

There was about a 5-10 second wait between each command in the test below:

~ $ echo Running off battery
Running off battery
~ $ osx-cpu-temp
42.9°C
~ $ osx-cpu-temp
42.9°C
~ $ osx-cpu-temp
42.9°C
~ $ echo Charger connected
Charger connected
~ $ osx-cpu-temp
39.0°C
~ $ osx-cpu-temp
38.8°C
~ $ osx-cpu-temp
38.5°C

It seems that this issue occurs whilst using iStats also. However Intel power gadget is working just fine.

This is very strange as a couple of weeks ago it was working fine.

Is anybody else experiencing this issue?

Thanks

[roastchicken]

I haven't experienced this (without specifically testing) on macOS Catalina 10.15.4 with a 2019 MacBook Pro 13". If you're still able to reproduce this, it might be worth testing the stock powermetrics command-line utility which (AFAIK) shouldn't have such an issue.

sudo powermetrics --samplers smc -i1 -n1 will get a single (-n1) sample from the SMC (--samplers smc) after waiting 1ms (-i1) (normally it samples continuously every 5000ms)

If you can reproduce it with powermetrics, then we know the cause is not osx-cpu-temp but rather what the SMC is reporting.