If you’re interested in customizing your Windows desktop, you’ve probably heard of Rainmeter. For the uninitiated, Rainmeter is a Windows application that allows you to customize your desktop with various applets and widgets called “skins”, greatly extending the capabilities of your Windows desktop.

Here’s a detailed look at Rainmeter, a Windows application that lets you customize your desktop with a variety of applets and widgets. I will walk you through the process of getting it, installing it, configuring it, and finding your own “skins” to use.

system requirements

Wait for a while; You’ll need a few things before you can install and configure Rainmeter.

• Windows XP or newer.Certain features require Vista or later.
• Visual C ++ Redistributables

Also note that some “skins” are self-configuring and may have special hardware requirements. Be sure to read the documentation before installing any skins. Later in this article, we’ll show you how to install and configure skins.

Installation

You can download theRain Gaugefrom your website. Please make sure to select the latest “Final Release” to ensure stability.

Open the Rainmeter installer. You will get two installation options. In this guide, we are using “Standard” and not “Portable”. In the last step of the installer, you have the option to enable Rainmeter to start at startup. I leave it enabled, but if you’re using an older computer with a slower startup time, you may not want Rainmeter to start automatically.

Rain gauge settings

The first time you run Rainmeter, your desktop will change to this.

It shows the default Rainmeter package, “illustro” and the combination of skins that are loaded by default. You’ll see the splash splash in the center of the screen with timers, system usage, and disk usage in the top right corner of the screen. You can remove them by right-clicking on them, clicking on “Variants” and then deselecting their “ini” file.

There is also another settings menu (used to control preferences such as transparency), but first, let’s right-click the Rainmeter icon in the systray and click “Manage”.

The Manage window is where you can really start learning about the program’s features. Let’s go ahead and go over each of them.

Furs

Skins lists the skins Rainmeter has in your directory, whether you installed them using the rmkskin file (like most skins) or manually placed them in the Rainmeter skins directory.

The default set of skins that ship with Rainmeter is “illustro” which offers various counters, monitors, and even a clever little Google search feature to give you some idea of ​​what Rainmeter is capable of. Remember that Rainmeter skins vary in functionality, from basic widgets to what can be considered complete applications in and of themselves. In this tab you can easily manage your active skins as well as update them to reflect any edits or changes made.

Projects

Layouts save and manage specific skin layouts. The default layout is the one you see every time you open the program. Thanks to the layouts, you can save your personal favorite Rainmeter settings until the next computer restart or Rainmeter restart. This setting is important if you want Rainmeter to become a large part of your daily desktop use.

Settings

Finally, Settings provides basic management settings such as update options, language settings, and an application that runs every time you edit specific skins. There’s no reason to change this for most people, but if you want all your skins to stay in one place, you can always check the “Disable Dragging” option in case someone else is using your computer or you’re concerned that you will accidentally change something. . .

Let’s move on to installing and using skins!

Find and install skins

For me, this is the best part of using Rainmeter. Rainmeter has a lively developer community, keeping different skins focusing on high-level aesthetics, extra functionality, or both. The possibilities are basically the entire blue ocean, but for the sake of this article, I won’t cover all of this. Instead, I’ll tell you “how” to find skins and install them, and give you some of my own recommendations at the end of the article.

Rainmetermeter’s own websiterecommendsdeviantArt, Customize.org, Reddit, and their own forums as places to find high-quality Rainmeter skins. Being a Redditor I choose to visitr / Rain gaugeto find what I am looking for.

Here you will find extensive and complete skins with a lot of elements, which the redditor who posted them usually sends you to where you can download them (usually it’s DeviantArt).

Found this very nice Rainmeter skin posted on the Rainmeter subreddit, but I just want the clock / date element.

Rewinded the Reddit thread to where the poster was conveniently linked to everything, including “Time and Date”.

Then I downloaded it from your site. (The Download button in DeviantArt is pretty well hidden.)

After downloading the skin, open the file which should be a “.rmskin” file (it may be in an archived folder that you need to unpack) and then click “Install” in the Rainmeter Skin installer.

Once that’s done, it’s time to start wearing the skins.

They wear their masks

After installing the skins, you may initially feel confused about how to actually add them to your desktop. To add skins to your desktop, right-click the Rainmeter icon on the systray, select “Skins”, then select the skin you downloaded (in my case, “Color Flow”).

Once you’ve got the skin on your desktop, you can hold down the left button to drag it across the screen and place it where you want it, or you can right-click it to bring up a set of additional options.

• Variantsallow you to use different versions of the same skin. They are usually of different sizes or styles.
• The settingsallow you to handle the options mentioned, transparency is one of the most prominent while the other options take you back to the Rainmeter menus we discussed earlier. However, all its basic features are covered here, and in general, you shouldn’t do anything other than the options listed.

To remove the skin from the desktop, right-click and click “Download”.

To reload it and reflect your changes, select “Update Skin”. Most of the time, you shouldn’t want to change these other options, but if you ever want to tweak your behavior or appearance a little, now you know how.

Show system statistics in Rainmeter

Many of Rainmeter’s most useful skins are the ones that display things like CPU Usage, GPU Usage, Temperatures, RAM Usage, etc., which allows you to get a glimpse of this generally elusive data just by looking at your desk.

For many of them, however, you’ll need to pair Rainmeter with third-party apps like HWiNFO to get deeper data (like GPU and CPU temperature).

It can be quite a complicated process, so if you want to head to that particular rabbit hole, we recommend going to the official Rainmeter website for aguide to integrating with HWiNFO.

From now on, the rest is up to you. There are so many great Rainmeter skins out there that we’ve decided to make a list of our favorites. And what better way to complement your Rainmeter desktop than with a beautiful 4k backdrop.

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