Rainmeter Skins Made Easy: Install, Lock and Save Layouts

Share ThisGet a free licenseEver seen one of those desktop screenshots with a slick clock, CPU graphs and a weather widget floating over a perfect wallpaper, and wondered how much work that was? Less than you'd think. Almost all of them run on Rainmeter, a free Windows tool that puts small widgets called skins on your desktop. The tricky part isn't getting skins. It's installing them cleanly, keeping them where you put them and stopping them from nibbling at your CPU while you game.

Here's the full routine, from the first skin to a saved layout you can restore in two clicks. UpdateStar currently lists Rainmeter 4.5.28.

Step 1: Meet illustro, your starter set

The first time Rainmeter starts, a few small panels appear on the right side of your screen: a clock, system stats, disk space and a welcome note. That's illustro, the standard suite that comes with the app. Each little window is one skin, and Rainmeter remembers the position and settings of every skin on its own.

Two places control everything:

1. Right-click any skin for its context menu. If a skin uses right-click for something else, hold Ctrl while you right-click.
2. Click the Rainmeter drop icon in the notification area once to open the Manage window. Right-click the same icon for the main Rainmeter menu.

Try it: right-click the welcome skin and choose Settings > Transparency > 50%. Instant see-through widget.

Step 2: Install a skin from an .rmskin file

Most skins you download come as an .rmskin package. These are the easy ones.

1. Double-click the .rmskin file. The Rainmeter Skin Installer opens.
2. Check the list of included components. You'll always see at least one skin. Some packages also bring plugins or a ready-made layout.
3. Leave Load included skins ticked if you want to see the skin right away.
4. Click Install.

The Skin Installer lists every component before anything is copied.

Two details save you headaches. If a skin with the same name already exists, the installer moves the old one to a backup folder first. And if a package includes a layout with Apply included layout selected, it replaces your current arrangement. Untick that if you only want the skin.

Running Rainmeter as a portable install? Start SkinInstaller.exe from the Rainmeter program folder and browse to the .rmskin file from there.

Got a skin as a .zip, .rar or .7z archive instead? Unpack it into your Rainmeter Skins folder (an archive tool like 7-Zip handles all three), then right-click the tray icon and choose Refresh all. The new skin then shows up in the menus.

Step 3: Load, swap and unload skins

Right-click any skin and open the menu named after its suite, for example illustro. Under it you'll find every skin folder and the .ini files inside. Click an .ini file to load it. The skin pops up in the top-left corner, ready to be dragged into place. To get rid of it, right-click and pick Unload skin. Rainmeter keeps its position, so it reappears in the same spot next time.

Some folders hold several .ini files. These are variants, like a disk skin that shows one or two drives. Right-click and open Variants to switch. Only one variant of a skin can run at a time.

Prefer a list? The Skins tab in Manage shows your whole library, and a double-click on an .ini file loads or unloads it.

Step 4: Arrange and lock everything

Drag skins with the left mouse button. By default they snap to screen edges and to each other when you get within 10 pixels. Hold Ctrl while dragging to ignore snapping.

For pixel-perfect rows, build a drag group: hold Ctrl+Alt and click each skin you want. Selected skins get a colored overlay, and moving one moves them all. With skins selected, the arrow keys nudge them 1 pixel at a time, or 10 pixels with Ctrl. Click anywhere outside the selection to release the group.

Once everything sits right, lock it down. Right-click a skin, open Settings and use these entries:

1. Untick Draggable so a stray click can't move the skin. Ctrl still lets you drag it on purpose.
2. Under Position, pick On desktop to keep the skin glued to the desktop, or Stay topmost if it should float over every window.
3. Turn on Click through for purely decorative skins, so clicks pass to whatever is underneath.
4. Under On hover, choose Fade out or Hide if a skin gets in the way when your mouse passes over it.

Step 5: Save your setup as a layout

A layout is a snapshot of all skin positions and Rainmeter settings. Make one before you start experimenting.

1. Open Manage and switch to the Layouts tab.
2. Tick Exclude unloaded skins to keep the snapshot tidy. Tick Include current wallpaper if your skins only look right on one background.
3. Type a name and click Save.

Saving a layout in the Layouts tab of the Manage window.

To switch, select a layout under Saved layouts and click Load, or use Layouts in the tray menu. Rainmeter saves your current state as @Backup before every load, so a bad switch is easy to undo. One catch: layouts store positions and settings, not the skin files. Customizations like fonts and colors live inside the skins themselves, so back up your Skins folder separately.

Step 6: Keep Rainmeter light

Every skin updates on its own schedule, so ten busy skins cost more than three. Unload what you don't look at. For gaming, use Game mode, which unloads skins to save CPU and GPU resources.

1. In Manage, open the Game mode tab.
2. Tick Full-screen games to switch it on automatically whenever a full-screen game is active on your main monitor.
3. Add other heavy programs to Additional process list, one per line.
4. Set On start to Unload all skins (the default) or to a lighter layout you saved for gaming.

Game mode can unload all skins or switch to a slimmer layout.

You can also toggle Game mode by hand from the tray menu. Doing that turns off the automatic checkboxes, so tick them again in Manage afterwards.

When skins misbehave

A skin vanished? It's probably hidden or off-screen. Right-click the tray icon, where every loaded skin is listed with its own menu. A skin shows garbage or nothing at all? Open Manage, click Open log and read the error in the About window. And plan ahead: Rainmeter 5.0 will need a recent 64-bit Windows 10 (version 1903 or later) or Windows 11.

Our verdict

Rainmeter suits anyone who likes a desktop that shows useful info at a glance, from tinkerers to gamers who want temps on screen. The skin installer makes the start painless, and Game mode keeps it from getting in the way. Before you change anything else today, save your current setup as a layout.

Related on UpdateStar

• Rainmeter on UpdateStar
• Rainmeter alternatives, such as StartIsBack++, GPU-Z and CPU-Z
• Rainmeter 4.5.28 is the last stop for older Windows and 32-bit systems before version 5.0

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