How to Use WhoIsCooking for Mac: The Beginner's Cooling Guide

CodexFuse Team · 2026-11-02T17:22:18.290Z · 13 min read min read

WhoIsCooking is a $5 one-time Mac app that shows which AI agent is heating your Apple Silicon Mac and cools it with one click. This guide covers setup, first read, cooling, runaway nudges, and heat history.

If your MacBook's fans start screaming the moment an AI agent kicks off a build, learning how to use WhoIsCooking can save you a week of guessing. WhoIsCooking is a $5 one-time Mac app, launched on Product Hunt on October 25, 2026 by independent developer Andrew Wilson, that lives in your notch or menu bar, shows your chip temperature, and — the part Activity Monitor never tells you — names which AI agent is making it hot. Consider this your whoiscooking tutorial — it walks you through the whole arc: buying it, reading it for the first time, the one-click cool, runaway nudges, and the heat-history view. If the agents themselves are new to you, our Claude Code beginner guide is the right place to start.

What Is WhoIsCooking, Exactly?

WhoIsCooking is a tiny Mac utility that answers one question: which AI agent is heating your Mac, and what do you do about it. It reads your chip temperature, groups every process an agent started — builds, tests, dev servers, renders — into one row per agent session, and lets you cool the busy work down to the efficiency cores with a single click while the job keeps running. It is a thermal dashboard for the coding-agent era, not a fan controller.

The maker's own origin story, posted in the Product Hunt launch comment, explains the gap it fills: "I run Claude Code and Codex on a MacBook and it kept getting hot, with no way to tell which agent was responsible. Activity Monitor shows dozens of node and compiler processes and no temperature at all." That is the whole pitch. Activity Monitor shows 80 cryptic processes; WhoIsCooking shows one row per agent.

Why Does Your MacBook Get So Hot When Agents Run?

Because an agent never runs just one thing. When Claude Code runs your test suite, it spins up the compiler, the test runner, file watchers, and sometimes a dev server — and if you have two or three agent sessions going, their processes interleave into a wall of indistinguishable node entries in Activity Monitor. The chip does not care which one you intended to run; it heats up from the total load.

That is why the one-row-per-agent model matters. Instead of decoding process names, you see "Claude Code — building 12 min" as a single line with its share of the heat. The mental model to carry through this guide is simple: one row per agent session instead of 80 cryptic processes, and cooling moves the busy work to the efficiency cores — the job keeps running, it just runs cooler. Say that to yourself once and the rest of the app makes sense.

How Do You Buy and Install WhoIsCooking?

You buy it once and that is it. The official site, whoiscooking.site, sells it for $5 as a one-time purchase with no subscription and no account. Pricing may change — all prices in this guide are date-stamped November 2, 2026. There is no free trial advertised anywhere on the vendor site or in any coverage I could find, so plan on the $5.

The requirements are narrow and worth checking before you pay. WhoIsCooking needs an Apple Silicon Mac (M1 through M5) running macOS 14 or later. The temperature sensors it reads exist only on Apple Silicon — on an Intel Mac the app can still show CPU use, but not temperature. Say that once: temperature readings are Apple-silicon-only; Intel sees CPU use only.

Buying works the way small Mac apps usually work: you pay on the site and get a download link tied to your purchase email. Existing buyers re-download the same way — sign in with the email you used to pay, per the maker's own forum post. The app is signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so macOS opens it without the usual "unidentified developer" warnings.

How Do You Read WhoIsCooking for the First Time?

The number in your notch or menu bar — whichever you prefer, the app lets you pick — is your live chip temperature. Click it and the panel opens: one row per agent session, each showing what the agent is doing and for how long. A row might read "building 12 min" or "dev server 40 min"; thin lines mean a session is open but idle.

What makes the first read useful is that the app recognizes the agents themselves, not just their processes. It recognizes Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, Cursor, Aider, Copilot CLI, Ollama, and LM Studio — plus Xcode builds, ffmpeg, Docker, and your browser. If you run local models, our Ollama beginner guide pairs well here, and if your agents live in containers, the Docker beginner guide explains the other half of your stack. When a session wraps a repo, the GitHub beginner guide covers the machines it all runs on.

Two behaviors of the app are worth knowing on day one. First, it reads the chip sensors every 20 seconds and only looks at processes while it is open or while the Mac is hot — when idle it sits at about 0% CPU and 14 MB of memory, so the monitor does not become part of the problem. Second, it never acts on its own: nothing is frozen, closed, or moved unless you click.

The full recognition list, as the vendor states it, breaks down into three groups:

How Does the One-Click Cool Actually Work?

The cool button does one specific thing: it moves the busy work onto the efficiency cores of your chip. The job keeps running, a little slower, while the Mac drops roughly 14 degrees. The vendor's current wording for the same render is "64°C before, 50°C after" — click "Full speed" and the power comes straight back.

There is also the older headline figure you may see quoted in coverage: on the maker's own M5, four processes running flat out went from about 83 degrees at full speed to about 48 degrees cooled. That figure comes from the maker's own testing and was reported by third-party directories — it is the maker's claim, not an independent benchmark, and the current vendor site now states the 64°C→50°C version instead. Report it as reported, and date-stamp any number you repeat.

Here is the step-by-step arc to cool a MacBook running Claude Code, the exact scenario the app was built for:

1. Open the panel. Click the temperature number in your notch or menu bar while your agent is mid-build.
2. Find the hot row. Look for the agent session with the biggest share of work — it might say "building 12 min" next to the agent's name.
3. Click cool on that row. The app shifts that session's processes to the efficiency cores. Nothing stops.
4. Watch the temperature. The chip number falls over the next minute or so while the build finishes — slower, but it finishes.
5. Click Full speed when you are done. The session returns to full power instantly. Quitting the app always restores full speed too.

The honest limits matter as much as the feature. The maker says it plainly: WhoIsCooking cannot cool GPU work or Apple's own processes. Cooling only changes which cores the work runs on — it never freezes your terminal or your apps, and it only quits something when you explicitly choose Quit.

What Are Runaway Nudges?

Runaway nudges are the app's answer to the most expensive mistake in the agent era: work that keeps burning long after you forgot about it. You get a nudge when an agent burns CPU for five minutes straight, or when it leaves dev servers running after its session ends.

This is the feature that pays for the $5 by itself. An agent finishes its task, the terminal window scrolls out of sight, and a dev server quietly keeps a core pinned at 100% for three hours. Without a nudge, you discover it when the fans start or the battery is gone. With the nudge, you see it in five minutes and decide: cool it, or quit it.

What Is the Today Tab and the Heat History?

Version 1.9, shipped days after launch, added the Today tab: a timeline of your chip temperature through the day, with the hottest moments labelled by which agent was responsible. Below it sits "Who heated your Mac today" — each agent's share of the day's work plus its hot minutes.

Each agent session also gets a timeline colored by what it was doing — building, testing, checking, running a dev server — with a thin line wherever the session was open but idle. After a week of this, the pattern of your own machine becomes visible: which agent habitually leaves servers on, which build step always spikes, which afternoon session is the regular stove. That history is the difference between reacting to heat and managing it.

The same update made the app notify you when a new version is out, so you do not have to watch the site. The maker ships fast — v1.9 arrived within days of the October 25 launch — which is worth knowing for a week-old product: features are still arriving.

WhoIsCooking vs Activity Monitor: What's Different?

The short answer: Activity Monitor shows processes; WhoIsCooking shows agents. The table below puts the practical differences side by side.

The deeper lane comparison is with real Mac thermal tools. TG Pro (Tunabelly Software) is the veteran of this space: real-time temperature monitoring across CPU, GPU, drives, and battery, plus fan control with Auto Boost rules. Macs Fan Control (CrystalIDEA) monitors fan speed and temperature with custom RPM or sensor-based curves, and FanControl (fancontrol.dev) is a menu-bar fan manager with live sensor readings for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. iStat Menus (Bjango) adds system-wide sensor monitoring, though its fan control can only raise speeds, never lower them below Apple's floor. None of them name your AI agents — that lane belongs to WhoIsCooking alone.

How Much Does WhoIsCooking Cost?

The whoiscooking price is simple: WhoIsCooking costs $5, once. One-time purchase, no subscription, no account — that is the entire pricing page, verified on the vendor site and the Product Hunt listing on November 2, 2026. The metadata lists it as 5.00 USD.

Two pricing notes for completeness. First, prices move — the $5 is date-stamped to this guide's research date, and third-party coverage advises checking whoiscooking.site for current terms. Second, there is no subscription and no account, which means there is also no upsell ladder to watch for. For a one-person indie app launched a week ago, that simplicity is part of the pitch.

What Are the 7 Beginner Mistakes with WhoIsCooking?

New users of thermal tools make the same errors every time. Here are the seven, with the fix for each.

Is WhoIsCooking Safe? Does It Freeze Your Terminal?

The direct answer: it is safe because it never stops anything on its own. Cooling only changes which cores the work runs on — the vendor's own words are "Cool, don't kill" — and the app never freezes your terminal or your apps. The only thing it quits is something you explicitly choose to quit.

The escape hatches are total. Clicking "Full speed" restores a session's power instantly, and quitting the app always restores full speed for everything. And because it is signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple, macOS opens it without warnings — no bypassing Gatekeeper, no "unidentified developer" ritual.

Sources

The facts in this guide come from sources fetched and read on November 2, 2026: the Product Hunt launch listing and the maker's launch comment (producthunt.com/products/whoiscooking, published October 25, 2026, page updated November 1); the vendor site whoiscooking.site (pricing, requirements, cooling behavior, Q&A verbatims); gptonline.ai's product overview (the maker's M5 83°C→48°C test figure, reported as the maker's own testing, features verified October 27); aitoolly.com's October 28 launch news entry (maker name, price, the 83→48 figure); and gettoolrank.com's daily feed (corroborating the current 64°C→50°C wording). Near-lane tool facts come from the vendors' own pages for TG Pro, Macs Fan Control, FanControl, and iStat Menus. Anything these sources did not state — trial terms, step-by-step install mechanics beyond the purchase flow, refund policy — is not claimed in this guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is WhoIsCooking free?

No. WhoIsCooking is a $5 one-time purchase with no subscription and no account, verified on the vendor site and the Product Hunt listing on November 2, 2026. There is no free trial advertised anywhere I could find, so treat the $5 as the entry price and check whoiscooking.site for current terms before buying.

Does WhoIsCooking work on Intel Macs?

Partially. The temperature sensors the app reads exist only on Apple Silicon (M1 through M5), so on an Intel Mac it can show CPU use but not temperature. If temperature readings are the reason you are buying it, you need an Apple Silicon Mac running macOS 14 or later.

Will cooling slow down or stop my agent's work?

It slows it "a bit" — that is the vendor's own phrasing. Cooling moves the busy work to the efficiency cores, so the job keeps running cooler and takes a little longer. Clicking "Full speed" restores power instantly, and quitting the app always restores full speed. Nothing is ever frozen or closed unless you choose it.

Is WhoIsCooking the same as the WhatsCook recipe app?

No — and the name pollution is real. WhatsCook is an AI meal-planning and recipe mobile app, and there is also a family cookbook repo called lookwhoscooking and a cooking game called What's Cooking. WhoIsCooking, the Mac app on whoiscooking.site, is a completely different product about AI agents and Mac thermals. The search engines mix them up; this guide is only about the Mac app.

Can WhoIsCooking cool GPU work or Apple's own processes?

No. The maker states this limit plainly: it cannot cool GPU work or Apple's own processes. If your heat comes from a GPU render or a runaway macOS service, this app will show you the picture but the cool button is not the tool for it.