Customizing your desktop has been an important part of computer lovers since the beginning of modern Windows.

^ 'Create your own Windows themes with Rainmeter 4.0'.'Rainmeter lets you customize your Windows desktop with widgets & skins'. 'How to Create an Attractive, Customized Desktop HUD with Rainmeter'. ^ a b 'Rainmeter 3.1 review: Customize your desktop with'.'Why you need Rainmeter even in a business setting'.

Reception ĬNET, in a 4 out of 5 star rating, praised the software's flexibility, wide variety of themes and 'enthusiastic community', while noting the program 'isn't as intuitive as it could be.' Softpedia also gave the software a 4 out of 5 star rating, citing its comprehensive tutorials and low system resource usage, while criticizing its lack of cross-platform support. System resource values and other information such as weather or time are stored through 'measure' values within a skin, which can then be shown through different kinds of customizable visual elements called 'meters'.

Rainmeter skins are written in Rainmeter code using a text editor and stored as INI configuration files. The project is primarily written in C++, while plugins can be written in either C++ or C#. The Rainmeter project was originally founded by Kimmo 'Rainy' Pekkola, the developer of Rainlendar, in 2001. Ĭommon functionalities of Rainmeter skins include desktop clocks, RSS readers, system monitors, weather widgets, application launchers and audio players. Ready to use collections of skins can be downloaded and installed in packages known as 'suites'. It allows users to create and display user-generated customizable desktop widgets or applets called 'skins' that display information. Rainmeter is a free and open-source desktop customization utility for Windows released under the GNU GPL v2 license.

Rainmeter clock widget