fan noise after upgrade to Big Sur

I had this problem - with an 2017 MacBook air 500 GB SSD and 4GB memory....

There was a process "secd" which was running constantly....and the fan was running even when I was simply opening and browsing websites.........what I did to stop the fan was

1. Reset the SMC - you can find instructions for your mac model at this link....

HT201295

2.

Then signed out of iCloud. Instructions are here :- HT208242

3.

Then rebooted the machine and the fan hasn't run since and everything else is operating as one would expect.

Bizarre but that's what worked for me....

I had the same issue. I went to Finder -> applications - > Activity Monitor -> CPU and found that an instance of "Google Chrome Helper" was dominating the CPU usage. I quit the helper from within Activity monitor and the fan slowed back down in the next ~minute. Google chrome is still working for now, so I'm not sure what that helper was doing.

2 apps are known to cause kernelmanagerd to spike

• Malwarebytes
• Karabiner-Elements

If you have these two installed, uninstall them, then reboot.

If you don't - check what other apps you have installed that might have a kernel extension (kext) component to them. That would be apps like virus apps, or system extensions, that hook into the system and do something.

Macbook Pro Late 2013 (Mac OS Big Sur)

Chrome v89.XX

The fan noise completely stopped after I removed the older Google Chrome Helper service. Figured out that additional google chrome helper service was running of an older version of Chrome (60.XX) even for the latest version running was (89.XX).

Steps to remove:

1. Open activity monitor --> Energy --> Look for Google Chrome Helper --> Stop (using button X) the service
2. Close Chrome application if running
3. Open Finder --> Applications --> Google Chrome --> Right click --> Show package contents
4. In Contents --> Versions --> Here look for older version folders and trash them

After this point, the Mac seems to be behaving better and does not keep the fan running even during charging mac.

I've been having this issue too and have let several days pass for the reindexing. Fan goes on full blast regardless what app i'm using - Slack, Chrome, R. Even Apple native apps like mail & pages make the fan run non-stop.

I had the some problem after updating to BigSur. The reason appear to be related to "Google chrome helper" over using the CPU, which keep on relaunching even when terminated. I solved this by checking the process PID on activity monitor, use it in the ps command in terminal to see from where it's being launched. I found out that it was launched from a previous chrome version (not current) so I deleted the whole version directory. Afterwards, I killed the process and it was never up again. I restarted the machine to check this behaviour is completely gone, and it was the case. Chrome seems to be working normally, but I am not sure if this manipulation is a safe one or not, at least it solved my problem.

I too have been having the same problem. When I upgraded to Big Sur I barely use my laptop for 10 minutes on one website or on 1 task and the fans start kicking on loudly and heavily and my computer gets hot.... I checked Task Manager already to see if there was anything running in the background and nothing. Why is this happening Apple? Please fix. I need to be able to open multiple tabs for school work but I am scared to because even on one tab the computer is overheating after the Big Sur upgrade...

Please Apple come out with an update to Big Sur. My 2018 MacBook Pro is overheating/fans running; the Adobe suite as well as Apple apps are using sufficient energy. SMC reset. NO HELP. Sent too authorized Apple Tech, best answer so far is wait until Apple releases an update or I can send it to you, but you're backed up 2 weeks. Meanwhile I don't want to try and go back to OS Catalina, because that will cause other issues. End 2020 on a high note Apple.

i fixes this by clearly the Mac and then logging out of of iCloud re boot then logged in again.

Check to see if you have a process called secd eating up your cpu. I had this and this actions fixed the issue for me. Hope this helps

I have a mac book air 2020 - since upgrading to Big Sur the fans are going constantly. I have left the mac on as I understood it is working in the background, but as I did the upgrade some 6 days ago - and the mac still has busy fans I suspect something is not right - activity monitor is indicating that kernelmanagerd is using 83% of the CPU - help

It's really strange but I went into the CPU and force quit Cyberduck and that significantly went down by half but for some reason it's starting up again but I will try to log out of iCloud and re-signing in again

Go into your activity in the utilities folder and the applications of where your hard drive is and shut down cyber duck in the background that uses a significant mound of energy and then also there's one more I forgot the name of it but I close that one too and now my computer is quiet as a mouse they really need to update Big Sur again of these issues

That and reinstall that happened with me with mountain duck. I thought something was a hardware issue it fixed the problem now my computer is quite again. I force quit mountain duck and then deleted and re download it. Now it’s working.

I had this issue as well. I tried the SMC a few times and it didn't work for me. I called support and the tech walked me through uninstalling the Malwarebytes software (that decision based on a kernalbyguard running at 70% on the activity monitor.) I

un-installed the malwarebytes software and immediately the fans shut off. Grateful to the tech for his guidance.

Nothing to do with Google Chrome Helper (each helper represents a Tab). The more tabs, the more memory in the helper.

Google Chrome has always been like this, since past 3-4 yrs.

So what’s the issue?

After every upgrade, MacOS tries to re-index everything on your machine. Spotlight takes a lot of time since it spawns many threads to read and build every directory and file (even within files). You can either turn off indexing completely by going to Spotlight settings → Search results, uncheck everything (under System Preferences) or exclude certain files or folders in the Privacy tab.

OR, give it a day or two to completely re-index. This may be different for everyone based on how many files they have on their system.