M1 MBP Fans always on

you can try this test:

Restart into Safe mode.

Safe Mode does a number of different things.

On older Intel Macs, hold shift at startup, but have your userid and password at the ready.

On newer Apple silicon Macs, shut down your Mac. Then as you start up again, hold the power key until the ’Startup Options’ screen appears.

A parade of unusual things happens.

• Your Mac loads just enough of the kernel to do a disk check. Then it proceeds to do a disk check. This can take an extra about five minutes.

• your userid and password are required, even if you normally auto-login. So have them handy.

• Your Mac adds ONLY a minimal set of Apple-Only extensions, Not including graphics acceleration extensions. Screen updates will therefore be wonky and slow, but it ultimately should be correct.

• Your Mac assumes defaults for as many settings as possible, including screen resolution. This is the key for re-setting the screen, but there is a little more to it: Resolution is likely to be temporarily lower and settings ordinary. Use this as a starting point to customize settings to your liking.

If you make NO changes, regular mode will just revert to what you had set before, so DO make changes!

Any changes you make in Safe Mode will "stick" in regular mode after you restart.

• after a Restart in normal mode, your Mac will take slightly longer to start up [once] because it rebuilds some system caches.

"Works in Safe mode, fails in regular mode" implies "It's something you added".

How to use Safe Mode on your Mac

Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support

All ChatGPT can do is report what answers seem to be appearing most often. Those from folks who fix these computers all day every day are given equal weight to answers from folks who are completely clueless.

ChatGPT does not KNOW anything.

When sensors die, you typically see kernel_task eating 100 percent or more of a CPU, because it is running a cool-down idle loop while the fans are set to maximum.

instead, you have something else keeping your Mac so busy that it could not complete an etrecheckPro report without that software saying, "too slow".

I notice that you have a number of items that load at startup or login and just take up resources, and others that are so old they are not signed or not functional"

Launch Daemons:

[Loaded] com.google.GoogleUpdater.wake.system.plist (Google LLC - installed 2025-12-02)

Command: /Library/Application Support/Google/GoogleUpdater/Current/GoogleUpdater.app/Contents/MacOS/GoogleUpdater --wake-all --enable-logging --vmodule=*/components/update_client/*=2,*/chrome/enterprise_companion/*=2,*/chrome/updater/*=2 --system

[Not Loaded] com.google.keystone.daemon.plist (Not signed - installed 2024-01-13)

<Empty>

[Not Loaded] us.zoom.ZoomDaemon.plist (Zoom Video Communications, Inc. - installed 2025-11-27)

Executable: /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/us.zoom.ZoomDaemon

Launch Agents:

[Not Loaded] com.avid.avidlink.plist (Not signed - installed 2021-12-13)

Command: /Applications/Avid/Avid Link/Avid Link.app/Contents/MacOS/AvidLink --trayonly

[Not Loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist (Not signed - installed 2024-01-13)

<Empty>

[Not Loaded] com.google.keystone.xpcservice.plist (Not signed - installed 2024-01-13)

<Empty>

--------

some of the may be legitimate, but generally, unsigned software is too old or wrong version or no longer useful, and should be removed.

So what was different about the store than home? What did you do 10 minutes after getting home?

Plugged in an external display dongle perhaps?

you have a very odd juxtaposition of adguard software at the same time Chrome is running

you hate the ads, but are willing to give away your privacy to google to be monetized.

Chrome is particularly resource-intensive because it installs Google which renders your Mac a full time information-harvesting and -uploading "bot" for Google's purposes. Those processes can't be turned off or disabled, even if you quit the Chrome browser. Even without knowing what else is installed on that Mac it is all but assured a multitude of Google's automatically updating virus-like processes are causing your Mac to work overtime.

Get rid of it. No one needs Chrome. .

—senior contributor John Galt

Follow these removal instructions

https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95319?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop#zippy=%2Cmac

More supporting evidence:

https://chromeisbad.com/

By far the easiest way to cause poor performance, instability, overheating and crashing is to install ANY third-party speeder-uppers, Cleaners, Optimizers, Virus scanners, Bit Torrent, or a VPN that you installed yourself. 

¿Are you running anything like that?

you need to un-install all these:

 VPNs:

    [Loaded] NordWhisper - /Applications/NordVPN.app

    [Loaded] OpenVPNTunnel - /Applications/NordVPN.app

    [Loaded] NordLynx - /Applications/NordVPN.app

and this one as well:

System Extensions:

  [Not Loaded] DuckDuckGo VPN Network Extension - version 1.154.0 (Duck Duck Go, Inc. - installed 2025-08-27)

    Application: /Applications/DuckDuckGo.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/DuckDuckGo VPN.app - version 1.154.0 (Duck Duck Go, Inc. - installed 2025-08-27)

    Description: DuckDuckGo VPN

and this:

Launch Agents:

  [Not Loaded] com.avid.avidlink.plist (Not signed - installed 2021-12-13)

    Command: /Applications/Avid/Avid Link/Avid Link.app/Contents/MacOS/AvidLink --trayonly

and These:

  [Not Loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist (Not signed - installed 2024-01-13)

    <Empty>

  [Not Loaded] com.google.keystone.xpcservice.plist (Not signed - installed 2024-01-13)

    <Empty>

do you have MORE than 8GB RAM?

do you have MORE than 20 percent FREE space on your Drive?

is there free and easy access to the air intakes along both sides and the warm air EXIT at the rear, by the hinge?

Install and Un-Install

the fundamental principles:

• anything installed with drag-and-drop to the /Applications folder can be un-installed by Drag-and-drop to the Trash. After a restart, the Trash can be emptied.

• anything installed with a complex installer program requires the manufacturer's un-installer program. sometimes this is included as an "option" in the Installer package, but the software-maker's web site should specify how to un-install (if they don't, they get swamped with users clamoring for Un-install Instructions).

DO NOT use any other web site’s instructions, unless you have complete trust in that specific site to tell you the truth.

Third-party un-installers could be malicious. The Classic case is malicious updaters for Flash Player.

• anything claiming to be an 'uninstaller helper' is just JUNK. (worse than web site click-bait)

Remember that you can not immediately DELETE anything yhat is part of the running MacOS, because if it were referenced after being deleted, your Mac would crash. What you can often do is Move to Trash, and after a Restart, the item will no longer be part of the running MacOS and the Trash can be emptied.

The EtreCheck report shows your macOS user account appears to be a Standard user instead of an Admin user. Do you have access to an Admin user account to run the EtreCheck report since the diagnostic information at the end is unavailable?

You can see macOS user accounts in the "Users & Groups" System Settings along with whether they had admin privileges or just standard privileges.

Plus to get accurate performance information, it is best to use the laptop normally until you encounter the issue, then run EtreCheck so it may capture some details about the system at that moment in time. Was your laptop having the fan issue during the 2 hours before you ran the EtreCheck report?

@Grant's advice regarding uninstalling the VPN software is spot on. See this article for more details regarding why VPNs are misunderstood & generally bad except for certain specific circumstances:

https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29

Post an etrecheck report so that we can see what may be causing your issue.

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6172

apple menu > about this mac

more than 8 GB RAM memory?

choribe wrote:

What should my next steps be?

This is a hardware problem that only Apple can fix.