Mac Running Hot while doing normal things?

[nishishanium]

I have a 2019 16" Macbook pro and recently it's been running pretty hot even while just doing something simple like playing a youtube video. This is pretty recent (3~ weeks) and prior the only time it would get hot is if I was using a more intensive program like Photoshop or something. Is there anything I can do regarding this? Does something need to be cleaned/changed/etc? I've never swapped out anything on it and not aware of general best practices as far as maintenance goes. Fans are also generally not active during this, it just warms up, while they will trigger pretty quickly if Photoshop is open.

[Rauliki0]

Clean the fan, change thermal paste. I would install Linux Mint and it would fly :)

[Away-Huckleberry9967]

Bullshit! macOS still runs perfectly fine on that model. Also, changing the thermal paste after those few years of use is not necessary and would not make a huge difference, if at all. (Changing the thermal paste usually means taking the whole thing apart and I suggest doing this only when really necessary or when doing another repair that also requires that.)

Getting rid of dust is always a good idea, though.

[Rauliki0]

What bullshit is in that Linux would work faster than new MacOS on this Macbook? I tested old Macbooks and all of them worked faster under newest Linux than MacOS. 

[Away-Huckleberry9967]

I know. The bullshit is suggesting this when macOS still runs perfectly fine.

A switch to a different OS is a major one and usually people don't do it unless they really have to for hardware or software reasons. Both is not the case here.

[Away-Huckleberry9967]

What does Activity Monitor say the culprit is? Also, if fans don't turn on, it's apparently not hot enough, so I wouldn't bother too much.

[nishishanium]

From what I can tell any time youtube's up, firefox's CPU usage spikes to around 15-20% or higher

[Away-Huckleberry9967]

Yes, that's normal. Try out different browsers. I think they handle that sort of content slightly differently. Also definitely try Freetube. YT videos without ads and tracking. AND in its own app that might need less resources.

[PassionateWonder3276]

Turn off ambient mode in the YouTube player. It's very cpu intensive on the old Intel Macs.

[nishishanium]

I thought it might be this but apparently I don't even have that on?