While you cant necessarily break anything by doing this ( essential system services will just restart themselves ), you might feel more comfortable simply restarting your Mac instead.

Heat is notoriously bad for computer hardware, so keeping things cool might help prolong the life of your MacBook, iMac, or Mac Pro.

The most obvious is that the Mac feels hot to the touch, particularly on the underside of the chassis if you have a MacBook.

This means you will hear considerable fan noise when your machine is under load.

Under extreme load, its not unusual for your Mac to sound like it is about to take off.

Remember that heat is a normal part of your Macs operation, and loud whirring fans means the machine is operating as normal in an attempt to cool itself down.

Loud rattling noises are also a red flag and usually occur when bearings in the cooling mechanism work their way loose.

There are some things you can do to help reduce this happening.

If the ambient temperature is hot enough, your Mac will reflect this by running the fans for longer and at higher speeds.

If youre outside on a hot sunny day and youre feeling warm, theres a good chance your MacBook is, too.

This is where your machine intakes and exhausts air, and these vents form a vital part of the cooling system.

If your Mac cant breathe, then it cant cool down sufficiently either.

It exhausts hot air out of the back, behind the display hinge.

If you are blocking these vents, your Mac will get hot even under regular load.

Sheets and clothing can easily interfere with air intakes, so its best to put your MacBook on a solid surface.

This could be a desk, or it could be a wooden tray or a large book on a bed.

The metal acts as a heatsink, helping to disperse heat through conduction while the fans provide active cooling.

The more you tax the CPU by running apps, copying files, and multitasking, the more heat is generated.

As the heat builds up, the fans kick in to disperse the heat.

Using lightweight alternatives to apps like Photoshop can certainly help, too.

Switching from a resource hog browser like Chrome back to Safari may help.

Even remembering to quit a heavyweight app when youre done with it can do wonders.

This could be caused by a particularly resource-heavy process, or it could be a case of an app crashing.

If your fans have been spinning for a while and your Mac is slow or unresponsive, you should check your running processes using Activity Monitor.

Mac Cleaner Cpu Always Running