What is fanny-macos-fancontrol?

This is a macOS application for monitoring and controlling the fan speeds on a Mac. By default, macOS manages fans automatically, but this app lets users set their own rules or manually adjust speeds, which can be useful on laptops that run hot during intensive tasks. The app works in two parts. A standard graphical interface built with SwiftUI handles the display and controls, while a separate privileged helper program communicates directly with the System Management Controller, which is the chip inside every Mac that controls hardware like fans, sensors, and battery management. Because writing to that chip requires administrator permission, the app asks for your password the first time you authorize it, then stores that permission for future use. The main features include live fan speed readings with an animated fan graphic, a rules engine where you can define conditions such as ramping fans to 80% whenever the CPU temperature exceeds a threshold, and manual sliders for precise control. Preset buttons let you jump to common speed levels quickly. When the app is closed or reset, fan control is automatically returned to macOS. The rules engine evaluates multiple active rules at the same time and always applies the highest speed among all triggered rules, which the README describes as prioritizing safety. Temperature readings for the CPU, GPU, and battery are shown alongside the fan controls. The app supports both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs and requires macOS 13 Ventura or newer. It is built from source using a shell script that compiles both the graphical app and the privileged helper and packages them into a standard Mac application bundle. The project is released under the MIT license.