DAgnew

Q: MacBook Air fan running more after Sierra update

Since I upgraded my two year old MacBook Air to Sierra this weekend it is now getting warmer and the fan is turning on after a couple hours of work. It almost never did this before the update. Any ideas?

 

Denise

MacBook Air

Posted on Sep 26, 2016 1:35 PM

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Q: MacBook Air fan running more after Sierra update

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  • by JimmyCMPIT,

    JimmyCMPIT JimmyCMPIT Sep 26, 2016 1:39 PM in response to DAgnew
    Level 6 (8,075 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 26, 2016 1:39 PM in response to DAgnew
  • by DrJus,

    DrJus DrJus Sep 27, 2016 9:06 AM in response to DAgnew
    Level 1 (19 points)
    Sep 27, 2016 9:06 AM in response to DAgnew

    I had this issue immediately after I installed Sierra on my MacBook Air.  First I tried resetting the SMC and the PRAM.  This did not stop the fans from constantly running.  I then used Activity Monitor to see what was possibly overtaxing my system.  I saw that the 'secd' process was consistently sucking up over 90% of my CPU usage.  Others however said that this is normal after an OS upgrade and should drop back down after the computer finishes its initial photo and file scanning.  I therefore let my MBA run plugged in nonstop for 36 hours straight and the fans just kept running while the 'secd' process continued to drain at >90% CPU usage.  I also looked closer at the Activity Monitor and saw that tasks like photo analysis had their own processes separate from 'secd'.  So I digged more into what the heck 'secd' was really doing with so much of the CPU resources.  Long story short, I found that there is some glitch in Sierra that causes the macOS to get stuck on a process involving the Keychain and iCloud.

     

    This is what I did to address this Keychain/iCloud issue that was leading to 'secd' overtaxing the CPU and triggering the fans to always be on:

    -In Activity Monitor, I used Force Quit to kill the process that involved the Keychain

    -In Activity Monitor, I then Force Quit the process that involved iCloud

    -In Activity Monitor, I finally Force Quit the 'secd' process. (I found that I could not simply Force Quit 'secd' without first killing the Keychain & iCloud processes first)

    -After all that, I restarted the computer and the fans were finally off!  I opened up Activity Monitor and saw that 'secd' was no longer hogging up CPU usage.  Processes like photoanalysis were still running in the background at 40-50% CPU usage with no unwanted triggering of the system's fans.  iCloud syncing and my Keychain were also functioning just fine.

     

    I finally am able to use Sierra without my fans blazing out of control.  Took me awhile to get this sorted out.  Hope this helps save you some headaches and time until Apple is able to realize that there is this Sierra software glitch they need to address.