This tutorial will show you a simple way how to show temperature and fan speed on an Ubuntu 24.04 laptop. This is extremely useful especially when your laptop tends to be hot and you live at a hot place. We use ThinkPad T430 as example for this tutorial and your results should be more or less the same. Now let's learn how to do that!

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Install the Requirements

Run Terminal and write this command line $ sudo apt-get install lm-sensors  followed by Enter.

Show Temperature and Fan Speed 

Run Terminal and try one command line below.

Command line:

$ while true; do sensors | egrep '(fan1|Core|temp1)'; sleep 1; echo "==========="; done

Output sample:

Core 0:        +61.0°C  (high = +87.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 1:        +59.0°C  (high = +87.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
fan1:        2533 RPM
temp1:        +59.0°C

Meaning:

Output above means more or less that our laptop temperature (or more precisely our CPU) is around 59-61 °C currently while our fan spins at 2533 rotation per minute. That's normal. The additional information there means that on ThinkPad, 87 °C is considered high temperature (so user must be aware of) and 105 °C is considered critical or very dangerous to the laptop (it can cause your laptop to break).

Picture sample:

Explanation:

while true; is a command to loop/repeat indefinitely any command after it.

do ...; done is a command that is part of while loop where any command inside it (...) will be looped/repeated.

sensors is the actual command to show all information about temperature and fan speed in a listing format.

pipeline character ( | ) is a connector so that output from a command becomes input for next command.

egrep is a filter/search that is capable to find more than one keyword at once.

'(fan1|Core|temp1)' is the argument to egrep that forms a command to show only fan1 and Core and temp1 by removing any other text from the output.

sleep 1; is the command to give delay by one second for the looping.

echo "===========" is the command to draw simple line and newline to every output.

lm-sensors is the package that contains sensors command below. 

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