### Phantasmic Help

## A Fan Control Utility for macOS

A Macintosh computer usually contains one or more cooling fans and a number of sensors that measure the temperature of various components of the hardware. Normally the fan operation is controlled by the system software via its firmware.

Phantasmic is a utility program for macOS that monitors and optionally controls the system fans, overriding the default behaviour of the system software.

On launching, it installs itself in the System Menubar, where it displays the temperature of the currently selected sensor and speed of the currently selected fan.

When clicked the menu appears as shown below:

The current values, as displayed in the menubar, along with the fan and sensor names are shown as the first 2 items in the menu, disabled but visible.

About Phantasmic
A small window showing credits and version numbers for Phantasmic.

Donate …
A window for making a donation to support development of Phantasmic.

Preferences …
A preferences dialog allowing you to set global parameters for Phantasmic.

Colours
The submenu lists the colour assigned to each sensor and fan. When you select an entry a color picker window appears that enables to change the colour assigned to the selected device. You can also reset all colours to their default values.

Bring All to Front
Bring all currently open application windows to the foreground.

Open All
Open all application windows in the foreground.

Close All
Close all application windows. Phantasmic continues to run and collect data in the background.

Show Phantasmic
A window that lists the fans and temperature sensors present in the computer. This is the main interface and enables you to asoociate a fan with a temperature sensor, optionally setting values to control the speed of the fan.

Show Tracking Graph
A window that displays a graph of the fan speed vs the temperature of the selected fan and temperature sensor.

Show Temperature Graph
A window that displays a graph of sensor temperature vs time of day. The maximum number of points displayed is specified in Preferences …

Show RPM Graph
A window that displays a graph of fan speed (rpm) vs time of day. The maximum number of points displayed is specified in Preferences ….

Show In Finder
Open a Finder window showing the location of the Phantasmic application.

Show Log
Open the current log file in the default log viewer. For most users this will be Console.app.

Show Log Folder
Open a Finder window focused on the current log folder. You can safely remove the old log files.

Export CLI tools
Export the embedded CLI tools embedded in Phantasmic to a chosen folder. The tools are:
1. arm64sensors - list all the thermal sensors on Apple Silicon hardware, showing their data type and current value.
2. fanutil - manually set the fan speed or revert it to automatic mode.
3. listsmc - list all the SMC keys, showing their data type and current value.

Basic operation of the tools is documented at Embedded Utility Programs

Check for Updates …
Check to see if a more recent release of Phantasmic is available.

Help …
This documentation.

Visit Website
Launch your web browser and go to the Phantasmic download page.

Reset to System Defaults
Remove all Phantasmic settings that have been modified from their defaults, reset the system fans to their default system settings and relaunch Phantasmic.

Quit
Restore the fan speed to its system default and terminate Phantasmic.

Copyright © 2018-2026 B.R. Christianson (bryan@whatroute.net)