Overheating MacBook Pro after Big Sur instal

I have a MacBook Pro 2018 15inch (i9, 32gb, 1TB) and I always use it on clamshell mode. Ever since I updated my MacBook and now my MacBooks fan is blaring so loud. I touch it and it is hot to touch. I am meticulous with my gadgets so I know how my macbook ran before and it wasn't like this at all.

I had a kernel and kernelmanagerd grabbing most of my CPU. Turned out it was malwarebytes. Deleted it. Rebooted. All good. I do know it takes a few days for Spotlight to reindex a drive but that seems to be done now too. All good battery back to normal. Fan not running. For a while it felt like the old days of owning a PC and you always waited for a few weeks to upgrade while bugs were worked out. Guess Apple is spending all the brain power getting ready to adapt to their own chip vs Intel

I had the same issue and when I checked activity monitor, secd (security daemon) was in process using over 100% of the cpu causing heat and fans to work in a high speed.

secd involves iCloud therefore I logged out and logged in to myMac using the appleID , Now works perfect.

I updated mine two days back and the fan is spinning like crazy, even when it’s sitting idle and even if I close the lid.

I did SMC reset, nothing.

Now I read something about database indexing over here and to just leave it running for a day or so, so I am going to try that. Let’s hope for the best.

Had the same issue. For me it was mds_stores process that caused overheating. This process is indexing for Spotlight. I dont use Spotlight so I turned off indexing by running this command:

sudo mdutil -a -i off

It immediately helped and CPU temperature went down

Hi same here about 3 month old 13” MacBook Pro ever since Big Sur its getting really hot. I have gone back to Catalina and it appears to be fine so I again install big sur but it starts occurring again so back to Catalina for me.

its a shame i really like big sur but i dont want my mac cooked!

Same issues as everyone else here, just to add: I've been running Big Sur now for almost a month with no real improvement on MacBook Pro 2018- fans running/machine heating up almost constantly... but other than that seems to function as normal. I just hope there's an update that solves this issue in the coming weeks.

Maybe they will do an update. Reminds me of the old PC days where the rule was NEVER to update for 6-8 weeks until Microsoft solved bugs. You need to look ate your activity monitor. Likely a gremlin of some type hogging CPU which creates heat and drives the fans. Overheating is never good. In my case I saw a reference to kernelmanagerd Yup, that was it for me. I found the app that was driving it and everything back to normal. It did take a few days for Spotlight to reorganize files..So good luck

i have the same issue too after upgrade to Big Sur my macbook pro 2018 keeps heats up, after fews days the heating is stop but the fan still keep running all the time , then i found the kernel task is throttling the CPU. Fan running at high speed. Then my macbook can’t use at all .before upgrade to Big Sur everything is fine. I have searched this problem on the internet.many people had the same experiences while they are upgraded to the new system. I was bring it to apple genius bar, then they check it and said there is some problem while download or upgrade the system , they collect my mac to reinstalll the system didn’t solve the issue, they ask to replace the logic board, but i haven't done anything with my macbook, only upragded to the new system and cause it happen,so i talk to their staff , they just told me there is no internal information talk about this. so they suggest to write a product feedback about this situation and it will send to their head office but they won't reply. if recived a certain number of the feedback, they will have some action. such as macbook pro butterfly keyboard replacement etc. otherwise they wont do anything for you.

After updating to Big Sur my 2018 MacBook pro 13" became to hold to hold and battery down to less than an hour. I deleted Google Chrome as recommended here and now back to normal.

Is this an example of Apple outlawing a Google product to get it off their machines?

Thanks for helpful answer.

I was having the same problem (MacBook Pro 2015) for weeks and it wasn't going away, but somehow deleting Chrome helped on my computer too. It's only 1hr post deletion but the problem for now seems to have gone away. I need Chrome for work so at some point I'll need to reinstall, but amazingly the fix worked or at the very least helped.

I second this. I have been having this issue for about 2-3 weeks now. This morning was update 11.1 which I thought may be dealing with the issue. Unfortunately it does not seem to be. I have been monitoring when my fans come on, what programs I am running and how long it takes for them to switch off. It's pretty ridiculous. Admittedly my machine is 2014, however, the amount of people with 2020 MacBook pro's reporting of this issue give no indication that it's a hardware error of the older machines and so not even a ploy by apple to make you upgrade to a newer model.

Just an update, I have now been running without Chrome for a day or two and it completely solved the problem. I honestly can't believe it but it absolutely was the solution for me. And sorry, just to clarify, I didn't even have it opened most of the time. But somehow uninstalling it solved the problem anyway.

Thanks for the update! Unfortunately however, I do not have Chrome installed, nor have I ever. I use Safari for everything internet based. It's also the fact that the fans run up even using simple programs like word and excel, not just using video services like YouTube.

I disagree that the overheating issue is normal after a system software upgrade. This is the first time that I have experienced this issue. I would add further that my MacBook Pro 15 does not overheat until I use Safari. As soon as I get on any website, the fans turn on and the heat rises. It is very annoying. Further to get the heat to cool down, I flush all of the cookies and the fans immediately slow down. But as soon as I go onto a new page, the fans start right back up.

So, I can't imagine that indexing is the issue. I installed Big Sur weeks ago and indexing should have been complete by now.