There’s iStat Menus, iStat Pro, and then there’s Temperature Monitor 4.96. It’s nice and simple overall, yet it gives you just enough customization to show the temperature stats you need on your PowerPC Mac. The best part is, there is a mini app which comes along with it.
- TemperatureMonitor4.96.dmg_.zip (LEM Software Repository, 3 MB)
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I like to set it to launch upon login, so the system temps are automatically in the menu bar. The Temperature Monitor Lite process tends to use 2.5% CPU, according to activity monitor. It looks nice and tidy up there, as though it belongs in the Menu Bar (even when clicked on).
My Memory Controller Heatsink is okay, not sure why the sensor is not reflecting on the app. It suddenly stopped reporting sometime in 2024. I’ll have to look into this, it may just be a disconnected sensor.
Customizations
There are alot of small ways you can customize this simple-looking temperature monitoring app.
- Fahrenheit or Celsius temperature unit
. - Turn the “Temperature Monitor 4.96” Splash Page “Application loading” on/off
. - Graph display: Zoom into current value range or use natural scale & absolute time designations
. - Remote monitoring
. - Update interval range 1s to 1h. (user changeable)
. - Customizable speech output, menu bar short names, customized app name, default color, and on/off setting for each sensor
. - Reorganize sensors in desired order for window and other window customizations for full monitoring app.
. - Full monitoring app also lets you have numbers in the dock, too.
. - Custom Alarm/speech/voice alert/open application functions for temperature thresholds.
Setting up “Start on login”
Compatibility
- OS X 10.2.5+ for version 4.2 or earlier.
. - OS X 10.4.0+ for version 4.8 and up.
. - See: Temperature Monitor – Macintosh Garden
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In Conclusion
This is just a nice, clean-looking temperature monitoring app I’ve been using for years across all my PowerPC Macs. The iStat apps are more recent for me, and I haven’t poked around in those at all until 2024. Just figured I would share something I’ve been using for a long time, which has been quite reliable for me. It seemingly lacks the ability to monitor the temperature of modern Sandisk SSDs like the iStat apps can, so maybe I’ll look into another app now.
