AirAssist

AirAssist is a menu-bar thermal monitor and workload governor built specifically for fanless Macs like the MacBook Air. It watches the SoC's internal thermal sensors and surfaces them in a tidy dashboard, complete with sparkline history grouped by category (SoC, battery, ambient, PMIC).

When temperatures climb, AirAssist duty-cycles the greediest background processes using POSIX SIGSTOP/SIGCONT signals — giving the Air a pressure-release valve so it can sustain workloads instead of thermal-throttling into a slideshow. The foreground app gets a CPU floor so your current work stays responsive.

Key features include a configurable menu-bar readout, thermal governor with per-process throttle rules, one-shot manual throttle, full per-sensor history, and an airassist:// URL scheme for automation via Shortcuts, Raycast, or Alfred. Everything runs at user privilege with no kernel extensions or privileged helpers.