How To.... Rainmeter Skins

Introduction

First things first, Rainmeter is an application for desktop enhancement. If you are on Windows Vista, you might know that there is an application called Sidebar where you can customize what widget you want to use on your desktop. Rainmeter do the same thing except with minimal user interface. Rainmeter is a rather lightweight application that can do the similar thing from displaying your CPU usage to displaying random pictures in your folder.

Rainmeter is very flexible and the most important part is it is editable to our taste. Just see the sample picture there if you get confuse of what I’m saying. Rainmeter can be run in Windows environment (So far, I’ve run Rainmeter application in Windows XP,Windows Vista, and Windows 7 without any problem at all).

Getting Started

To use the Rainmeter skins in this blog, firstly you have to download the Rainmeter application. You can search it on Google or alternatively click this link.  After you have downloaded the application, install it in your system. If you want the Rainmeter to start whenever the Windows started, you have to check the “Add shortcut to startup folder” option on. If you have installed it, run the program and you will see a Rainmeter logo in your tray icon (It’s on the bottom right with “water drip” logo). To select the existing skins, right click on the logo and highlight “Config”. You’ll see the available skins that you can use. Select the “.ini” file of that skin and you are set to go.

Importing Skins

To use the skins that are posted in this blog, firstly you have to extract the RAR file that you have downloaded from my blog (Just right click on the RAR file and choose “Extract Here”). If you don’t know how to extract RAR file or you don’t have the application to extract RAR file, just go to this link. Now, you have to copy the extracted folder to your Rainmeter skin archive. If you use the default installation, it will be located inC:\Program Files\Rainmeter\Skins\ or if you are using Rainmeter version 1.0 or above, the default installation will be on My Documents\Rainmeter\Skin\. Otherwise, right click the Rainmeter program in the Start Menu and choose Properties->Open File Location. If you have found your Rainmeter skin archive, copy the extracted folder to the skin archive and your skin is now ready to be used. To use the skin, right click again on the Rainmeter logo, click “Refresh”, and then right click again on the Rainmeter logo one more time, and highlight “Config”. The new skin that you’ve extracted is now available to be used. Enjoy!

Winamp Capability Skins

Most of the skins I created can play music from Winamp application. This skins can be easily spot on with their play button and such or the text of the music you currently are playing. To activate this capability, first you have to have a Winamp application (of course). If you want to download the application, you can download it onhttp://www.winamp.com. By default, the skins should point to the default installation directory of winamp, which is on C:Program FilesWinamp. If you installed the Winamp application there, then there would be no need for modification. However, if you decided to put it in a different file, then you have to change the WinampFolder in your .ini file of the skin. Change the value of WinampFolder to the path of the directory which your Winamp application resides. If you done that, try refreshing the skin (Right Click -> Refresh All, on the Rainmeter icon on the taskbar) and now you should have the ability to play music from your Rainmeter skin.

Other Media Player Capability Skins

From March 23rd 2012, skins will be added more media players to be observed. The following media players that are supported in the skin are: AIMP, FooBar2000, andWindows Media Player. For FooBar2000 users there is a required pre-installation to be done that is available in the skin file you downloaded. Make sure to follow the instruction to get your Rainmeter skin connected to your FooBar2000 application.

Picture Frame Skins

You need to configure the .ini file  before getting the skin to display your pictures. First, change the “ImagePath” variable to the address/ directory which you want the skin to display your picture. Don’t forget to add a backslash () at the end of the directory (Example: C:Pictures).If you want the application to crawl the subfolders of the current directory, put the “Subfolders” variable value to “1″. Now, to set the length of time on changing between pictures, you need to set “Update” value (in terms of miliseconds).