Software Alternatives & Reviews

thinkfan VS iStat Menus

Compare thinkfan VS iStat Menus and see what are their differences

thinkfan logo thinkfan

Thinkfan is a simple, lightweight fan control program.

iStat Menus logo iStat Menus

"An advanced Mac system monitor for your menubar."
  • thinkfan Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-16
  • iStat Menus Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-16

thinkfan videos

Lenovo W520 Fan Control using thinkfan

More videos:

  • Review - Thinkfan on Thinkpad T410 - thinkpad_acpi doesn't seem to support fan_control (2 Solutions!!)
  • Review - Ubuntu: thinkfan control doesn't use the fan full potential when needed (2 Solutions!!)

iStat Menus videos

iStat Menus 6 Review: Best Mac Power User App

More videos:

  • Review - iStat Menus 6 for Mac Review
  • Tutorial - iStat Menus 6 - Best macOS System Monitor - Tutorial

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to thinkfan and iStat Menus)
Monitoring Tools
13 13%
87% 87
Log Management
16 16%
84% 84
Device Management
18 18%
82% 82
OS & Utilities
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using thinkfan and iStat Menus. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare thinkfan and iStat Menus

thinkfan Reviews

We have no reviews of thinkfan yet.
Be the first one to post

iStat Menus Reviews

8 Best SpeedFan Alternatives for Computers for Windows and Mac
You know most of the macOS tools are paid. So is this one. However, iStat Menus has a trial period of 14 days. And we believe two weeks are more than enough to judge the quality of a piece of software. What we liked the most about this is its comprehensive way of presenting details.
Source: xtendedview.com
Top 8 BEST NZXT CAM ALTERNATIVES
It’s another worthy contender to Nzxt CAM for obtaining precise computer performance statistics. CPU, GPU, RAM, HDD, and other performance metrics are available from the iStat Menus. The program can also be used to overclock the GPU.
Source: gisuser.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, iStat Menus should be more popular than thinkfan. It has been mentiond 53 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

thinkfan mentions (14)

  • [Linux@T460] Fan running non-stop (every now and then)
    I use Thinkfan on my T420, T440, X230 and X1 that run Linux. I linked the author's github page, but I believe it's available straight from the package manager in Ubuntu/Mint, so elementary might have it too. Source: 10 months ago
  • Fans issue on my Lenovo Thinpad P16s AMD on Ubuntu
    I have found Thinkfan seems to be a good way to control Thinkpad fans on Ubuntu. Https://github.com/vmatare/thinkfan. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Black screen after suspend resume - gnome wayland
    Solved that with Thinkfan (https://github.com/vmatare/thinkfan). Source: over 1 year ago
  • The minimum viable fan control script
    The second solution on this page probably isn't reliable, because hwmon paths like `hwmon3` depend on module load order. That's likely the same reason for the `card*` workaround mentioned above. I am using thinkfan for this and it works really well: https://github.com/vmatare/thinkfan. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Problem building thinkfan from source: DSO missing from command line
    As thinkfan (https://github.com/vmatare/thinkfan) doesn't come prepackaged with my Debian version I tried to build it myself. I installed all the libraries as instructed in the README file, and followed the build instructions. Running cmake works fine, but then when I run make I get the following linker error that I cannot solve no matter what I try (this is actually my first time building a project!):. Source: over 1 year ago
View more

iStat Menus mentions (53)

  • A collection of useful Mac Apps
    iStat Menus - Price: $14.99 (one-time purchase) Advanced system monitor for macOS that displays real-time CPU, GPU, and network usage. Source: 10 months ago
  • HELP PLEASE: MAC AIR ULTRA SLOW CPU
    iStat Menus has been around a long time and is very reliable. I've used this for many, many years on numerous different Mac models, and it's top-notch. It displays all sorts of system statistics in the menu bar and lets you define custom fan controls for different component (CPU, etc) temperatures, all in a nice, sleek interface. Source: 10 months ago
  • After dreaming of Al Gore's setup for 15 years, finally I got this:
    Don't do this on my behalf but if you're ever curious yourself, on some other date, you can use iStat Menu among other utilities or readers to check GPU utilization, thats a lot easier to read than Activity Monitor. If using iStat, go to iStat Menus, click on the CPU/GPU dropdown, then the GPU in the active items bar, and select processor. You'll see a graph and you can just let that sit for a few minutes and... Source: 10 months ago
  • ACC + Steam working great with apple's game porter
    Fantastic! I read that it is an M1, but what model and configuration exactly is it? If you like and are curious, install this app https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/, it tells you everything, temperature, fan RPM, etc. Source: 11 months ago
  • MacBook Pro keeps heating up really fast.
    You can monitor the internal temperatures with iStat Menus or similar, but there's really no need. The system automatically adjusts fan speed to cool itself off when needed. Source: 11 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing thinkfan and iStat Menus, you can also consider the following products

SpeedFan - Hardware monitor for Windows that can access digital temperature sensors located on several 2-wire SMBus Serial Bus. Can access voltages and fan speeds and control fan speeds. Includes technical articles and docs.

Stats - Simple macOS system monitor in your menu bar.

iMac HDD Fan Control - iMac HDD Fan Control is an HDD fan control for the Mac operating systems by using which the Mac users can control the speed and noise of the fan of the Mac.

smcFanControl - [Download] smcFanControl 2.

Open Hardware Monitor - Monitors temperature sensors, fan speeds, voltages, load and clock speeds, with optional graph.

Argus Monitor - Argus Monitor is for monitoring and analyzing the temperature and the health status of the hardware parts of the system.