How to Find Your Mac’s Exact CPU Model

on April 12th, 2016 by Hades | 1 Comment »

When buying a new Mac, Apple gives you just enough information about the system’s hardware to make a good comparative choice between the different models, but the company keeps the exact hardware details hidden in order to avoid customer confusion. For example, when shopping for a new MacBook Air, Apple tells you that the base CPU is a “2.5GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor (Turbo Boost up to 3.7GHz) with 6MB shared L3 cache”, but doesn’t reveal the specific model.

How to Find Your Mac’s Exact CPU Model

First, launch Terminal from the Macintosh HD/Applications/Utilities folder (or by searching for it with Spotlight). Then, enter the following command and press Return:

sysctl -n machdep.cpu.brand_string


You’ll immediately see a new line of text with the exact make and model of your Mac’s CPU. In our example, our 2015 MacBook Pro is powered by a single Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4870HQ CPU @ 2.50GHz.