swmarakis/thinkpad-fan-control

ThinkPad Fan Control is a Linux application for Lenovo ThinkPad laptop owners who want more control over their cooling fan than the operating system normally provides. On Windows, a tool called TPFanControl is commonly used for this purpose, this project fills that gap for Linux users, including those running the Wayland display system used on modern GNOME and KDE desktops. The application has two parts. A background service called thinkpad-fand runs with administrator privileges and is the only part that directly adjusts the fan speed. A desktop control panel called thinkpad-fan-gui runs as your normal user account and shows you the current CPU temperature and fan speed, lets you switch between modes, and lets you draw a custom temperature curve. The two parts communicate by writing to a configuration file, which means the graphical panel never needs root access. There are three operating modes. Automatic mode follows a curve you set yourself: as the CPU gets hotter, the fan speeds up according to points you drag on an interactive graph. Manual mode holds the fan at a fixed level you choose. BIOS mode hands control back to the laptop's firmware, the same as if you had not installed the software at all. Several safety features are built in and cannot be disabled. Above a configurable temperature limit (defaulting to 87 degrees Celsius, hard capped at 90), the fan is forced to maximum regardless of what mode you selected. If the background service ever crashes, the firmware automatically takes over cooling within about 15 seconds. The service also validates and clamps every value it reads from the config file to prevent bad settings from harming the hardware. Installation on Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, and Pop!_OS is a single command using a provided .deb package. Building from source requires cloning the repository and running an install script. The project is MIT licensed.