Current version: 2.9.1 (November 30, 2019) . Just updated! What’s new?

Get the PRO version here.

What others say:

“I noticed nearly an hour increase in potential battery life when using the app to toggle Turbo Boost off on a new model MacBook Pro” (OSXDaily)

“The MacBook Pro also runs noticeably cooler, and gains about 25% more battery life“, “For now, I’m going to continue to happily run Turbo Boost Switcher Pro to selectively give myself better battery life, and I recommend it for anyone else with the same need.” (marco.org)

“En mis pruebas, logré obtener entre un 25 a 30% extra de duración de batería…” (arturogoga.com)

OSX 10.6+ compatible up to macOS Catalina & current Big Sur Beta ¿Installing for the first time on a machine and with macOS High Sierra/Mojave/Catalina/Big Sur installed? Read this first.

Looking about how to update? Read more here. Any additional doubts and/or problems when running/installing? Read the FAQs here.





Features:

Turbo Boost Switcher is a little application for Mac computers that allows to enable and/or disable the Turbo Boost feature.

It installs a precompiled kernel extension (32 or 64 bits depending on your system) that updates the Turbo Boost MSR register, so It will ask for your admin password when using it.

It’s installed on your Mac status bar and allows you to:

Languages: English, Spanish, Chinese (beta), Russian (beta), German (beta), Polish (beta), French (beta), Swedish (beta), Czech (beta), Italian (beta).

macOS Mojave ready with full dark mode support.

Visually know if Turbo Boost is enabled or disabled at any time.

25% more battery life and lowering down the CPU Temp up to 20ºC. (check this). Enable / Disable Turbo Boost manually, getting up to aand lowering down the CPU Temp up to

Fan and Temperature charts.

Configure it to disable Turbo Boost automatically at launch.

Enable / Disable Turbo Boost automatically for a set of apps (only on Pro version).

version). Set default mode for Turbo Boost Enabled or not (On or Off)

Disable Turbo Boost when battery charger is not connected (only on Pro version).

version). Disable Turbo Boost depending on fan speed (only on Pro version).

version). Disable Turbo Boost depending on remaining battery time (only on Pro version).

version). Disable Turbo Boost automatically when battery goes below a configurable level (only on Pro version).

version). OSX Notifications/Alerts integration (only on Pro version).

version). Asks for root password only once (only on Pro version).

version). Status Bar configurable.

Status Bar fully configurable (Temperature, fans, cpu load, etc, only on Pro version).

version). Display CPU Load

Check your CPU temp and fan speed.

Display temps in ºC and ºF (only on Pro version).

version). Set it to open at login.

Automatically restore Turbo Boost on exit.

Here you have a couple of additional screenshots (PRO version):













How to install:

Get the Pro version here to help keeping alive this project :).

You can also download a free binary application or the source code to compile it with XCode.

Once downloaded/compiled, just unzip (or open the .dmg if using PRO). Drag the .app to your Applications folder (this is a must on any version equal to Sierra or above) and double click on the App. An icon like the next one will appear on your status bar.

If you see a message saying the app “can’t be opened because it is from an identified developer”, then you need to change your settings to allow not-signed apps to be installed. Go to your System Preferences->Security and Privacy and mark the option “Anyhwere”. Try again, it should work.

Also, and just if you’re running for the first time on a machine with macOS High Sierra or above installed, you’ll need to allow the kernel extension to be used the first time you try to disable Turbo Boost.

Just go to System Preferences -> Security and Privacy and click “allow” after trying to disable Turbo Boost for first time. You can read more about this here.

From Mojave 10.14.5 and also in Catalina, a reboot may be needed just after this. No worries, macOS will ask you to do that if you need to do so, but just in case, remember rebooting after authorising the kext to run.

Apple is also providing detailed info about this here. Below a couple of screenshots of the process.

Motivation:

Turbo Boost is enabled by default on all Macs that support it, but why anyone should want to disable it?

Ok, here are some reasons:

CPU Overheat: When Turbo Boost is activated, prepare to experiment high temperatures on your CPU, since it pushes till it reaches almost the 100 ºC. This is controlled by hardware, but if you want your computer to live long, better keep it as low as possible. With Turbo Boost disabled I’ve been able to get up to 20 ºC degrees less!!!, that’s a value worth considering. When Turbo Boost is activated, prepare to experiment high temperatures on your CPU, since it pushes till it reaches almost the Junction Tº , usually. This is controlled by hardware, but if you want your computer to live long, better keep it as low as possible.

Battery Life: When disabling Turbo Boost you will get up to a 25% more of your battery life. Just check this post at marco.org :).

Parallel Processing: Turbo Boost is activated (by Intel® internal algorithms) when one of the CPU cores reaches 100%, increasing the core Mhz, but It won’t do it if all or your cores are 100%, since that will create a lot of overheat. This will reduce your parallel processing performance so, in some situations, you better disable it.

If you are like me, you probably do some high cpu demanding tasks from time to time, like photoshop editing, video transcoding, casual gaming, etc. and your fans go to max speeds while your CPU keeps crazy ranges like 93 – 98 ºC.

I’ve started to look for applications, and the only thing I found was this cool kernel extension https://github.com/nanoant/DisableTurboBoost.kext created by “nanoant”. This is a very simple extension that manipulates the MSR record writing the Turbo Boost flag.

If you don’t want to always be opening your terminal, compile the code, make sure you don’t forget to re-enable it, etc. then Turbo Boost Switcher is for you.

How to know if Turbo Boost is enabled (or not):

To see the differences between having Turbo Boost enabled or not, you can do the following tasks:

Install smcFanControl, a cool app that will help you to set your fan speeds to desired values.

The simplest one, do some high demanding gaming with Turbo Boost enabled and disabled, checking the CPU temperature values and see the differences.

You can also launch some long time high demanding tasks, like the Geekbench benchmarks app. You’ll get a lower value since Turbo Boost will not be triggered. On my Macbook Air I go from 7500 to 4000 points aprox. with Turbo Boost disabled.

Open a terminal and execute “kextstat”. If you see a line including “com.rugarciap.DisableTurboBoost” that means Turbo Boost is disabled.

Check the MSR register for yourself (0x1a0), but that could be tricky and we’re not going to go deeper here.

Thanks to: