7 Rainmeter skins I wish I knew about sooner

Every once in a while, we come across personalization tools that tick all the right boxes, becoming one of the mainstays of our user experience. Besides fan favorites like Wallpaper Engine, Rainmeter is one of those few that I haven’t uninstalled in years. It is a powerful, open-source tool for Windows that lets you customize your desktop to an incredible degree. If you’re tired of the stock Windows look and feel, Rainmeter skins are your gateway to a world of personalization.

Skins are interactive elements built on the Rainmeter engine that you can develop, personalize, and interact with. You can mix and match different skins, customize them to your liking, and create a desktop that is uniquely yours. Whether you’re a seasoned pro who loves to tinker with every aspect of your system, or a newcomer who just wants to add a bit of flair to their desktop, Rainmeter has something for everyone. In my years of using this software, I’ve identified a few skins that I keep coming back to, simply because they are refined, useful, and sometimes, fantastic conversation starters.

7

SYSMonitor with HWiNFO integration

Keep tabs on performance

System performance tracking is a perennial thread in every PC enthusiast’s mind. Still, a mix of compatibility concerns, OEM software, and the need to run logging in the background usually hamstrings the experience. However, there are great background performance loggers like HWiNFO, and Rainmeter’s SYSMonitor skin pulls information from those logs to show you changes in near real-time.

After just a few minutes of careful configuration, this comprehensive Rainmeter skin provides a detailed overview of your computer’s vital statistics, all in a clean and organized package. With support for up to 16-core CPUs, including those with Hyper-Threading and efficiency cores, SYSMonitor is built for modern hardware. It doesn’t just stop at the processor, either—you can monitor your RAM usage, network speeds, and even the read/write activity of your hard drives. HWiNFO integration further shows a wealth of information that would otherwise be inaccessible, such as the temperatures of your GPU, CPU, and even your mainboard’s chipset. You can also keep an eye on your case fans, ensuring that your system is running cool and quiet.

If you don’t want to run HWiNFO and would rather use the stats gathered in Windows’ default Task Manager, SYSMonitor can do that too. Moreover, each element is interactive, so clicking it pulls up the relevant Task Manager tab or file folder (for drives). This combination of detailed information and convenient shortcuts makes SYSMonitor an essential tool for any power user. Since Rainmeter can display over applications, I find this skin particularly handy when monitoring an overclock for stability, and when monitoring case fans I suspect of imminent failure.

6

Your smartphone’s clock

Hello from Google, in its Material Design language

Sometimes, less is more. If you’re a fan of clean, minimalist aesthetics, you’ll love the CleanClocks skin. This elegant Rainmeter widget adds a touch of pixel-perfect style to your desktop with its simple yet beautiful clock designs. Inspired by material design, CleanClocks offers a variety of clock faces that can be easily resized and customized to fit your setup. This versatile skin includes a few variations of a modern digital clock as well as the classic analog look.

Unlike Windows’ taskbar clock huddled in the corner, CleanClocks is a nice visual element on my desktop. It breaks up the monotony and doesn’t even bombard me with information or distract me with flashy animation. This skin has just one job — to tell me the time — but it is proof that not all skins need to have serious functional value. Even something as simple as a clock with a good design is worth appreciating. If you’re tired of cluttered, overly complicated widgets, CleanClocks are a refreshing change of pace that will make you appreciate the beauty of simplicity.

There are scores of other Rainmeter clock skins listed on DeviantArt, designed to suit every imaginable aesthetic, from cyberpunk to quaint and peaceful.

5

Becoming one with the wallpaper

Tailor-made skins

If you’ve been toying with Rainmeter skins for any amount of time, you’ll notice there are a handful of skins designed to pair well with specific wallpapers. The elements of the skin, interactive or otherwise, seem to fit like they are part of the static image in the backdrop. Liberal use of transparent or translucent widgets also helps sell the effect to unassuming viewers. This effect works mostly because display aspect ratios and resolution increments are fairly standardized now.

The Metro Opacity skin pack is one such add-on that leverages this simple trick to create an immersive and interactive visual. With 48 different color themes to choose from and support for resolutions up to 2160p, Metro Opacity Shaped is as versatile as it is beautiful. You can monitor your CPU, GPU, and RAM usage, as well as your network speeds and hard drive space. The skin also includes a handy clock and a recycle bin you can open with a left-click and empty with a right-click.

One of the most impressive features of Metro Opacity Shaped is its support for multi-GPU setups and CPUs with up to 16 cores. It also includes audible temperature warnings for your GPU, CPU, and hard drives. However, you can always change the colors and fonts in use through the same process used to edit most Rainmeter skins — Notepad or the skin’s own Settings panel.

4

Feature-rich HSL slider

One for the artists

If you’re a creative professional or just someone who loves to play with color, you’ll appreciate the HSLiders Rainmeter skin. This powerful tool gives you a set of Hue, Saturation, and Lightness (HSL) sliders that you can use to fine-tune the colors of your desktop. I find it a great alternative to a similar color picker utility accessible through Microsoft PowerToys or a Google Search query for “Color picker”. When enabled through Rainmeter, you can use this skin to color-match all other skins and perform basic operations such as identifying complementary colors and opposite colors.

The skin is incredibly versatile, with options to control the color of your desktop background, taskbar, and even other Rainmeter skins. You can also save your favorite color schemes as presets, so you can easily switch between them. In minimized mode, this utility switches to color picker mode with a variable-size eyedropper you can scroll to enlarge. This attention to detail unlocks a new level of personalization so you aren’t eyeballing color matches across your system theme.

I find it useful for identifying hex codes for colors I see on the internet, so I can incorporate them into system UI theming later. It’s also invaluable for designers looking to color-match scenes, like when performing spot repair in a photo edit, or when syncing brush color across multiple pages of a digital illustration.

3

Customizable universal search bar

Look up from anywhere

From the same person who created the HSLliders skin comes a new creation called Animated Multi Search Bar. As the name would lead you to believe, this is a skin that creates a catch-all search bar that remains appended to your desktop. It might not seem useful at first, but if you’re like me, working on local programs and frequently looking up information online, this little Rainmeter skin can save you a couple of clicks and seconds every time you reach for the web browser. Instead of using a browser to pull up my desired search engine each time I need it, I prefer navigating to the desktop and typing the query directly in this Rainmeter search bar.

The Animated Multi Search Bar lets me search up to 25 different search engines from a single bar. You can choose from 11 different animations, customize the orientation of the search bar, and even use specific programs for searching. The skin is also resizable and allows for independent settings for each search engine, so I can create a search experience that is tailored to my needs. With these powerful search bars, you’ll never have to leave your desktop to find what you’re looking for again.

This skin also ranks high on my list of suggestions I wish I knew about sooner, because figuring out how to customize Rainmeter skins can take a while. If you’re just starting out with your personalization journey, this skin is a great starting point because the developer has listed configuration steps in sufficient detail right on their DeviantArt page for this skin. That said, this skin could seem overwhelmingly option-rich for some users who just want to see what Rainmeter can do before they tinker with it. For such users, I recommend the CyberSearch Private Edition skin. It just needs Windows Vista or newer, and offers dedicated search bars for DuckDuckGo, Startpage, and Qwant.

2

Stay in touch with the news

The fundamental use of widgets is to ease the hassle of checking a handful of things repeatedly. In my line of work, staying current with the latest tech developments is essential, and a reliable RSS reader is about as important as my email inbox. However, checking it repeatedly takes away a significant amount of my time, and I just prefer having a headline ticker right on my desktop instead. Rainmeter has a few RSS reader skins, and my favorite one shows 10 top articles for three configurable topics of my interest, with content loading/refreshing when you click the topic name.

The skin is highly customizable, with options to change the font, the highlight effect for news items, and even the language. Version 1.1 added support for English, Greek, and Russian, so you can read the news in your preferred language. The skin has also undergone some visual improvements, with a cleaner and more modern design. If you’re looking for a simple and effective way to stay informed, the Google News RSS skin is a great choice.

Unlike some RSS readers that pull images, this one sticks to the text alone, offering a simplistic yet informative presentation. Now, don’t get me wrong, using this Rainmeter skin doesn’t eliminate a purpose-built RSS reader altogether. Instead, you’ll just reach for that browser tab infrequently, potentially saving hours spent doom-scrolling.

Everyone needs one

In most instances, I would agree that a desktop usually doesn’t need a weather panel unless it’s on your laptop, and you travel frequently, or if you simply cannot view a window from your setup. My excuse for running a Rainmeter weather skin is that I need to keep track of the conditions in a few different cities, and the Sienna 2.0 skin does that in style. This collapsible widget provides a detailed overview of the current weather conditions, as well as a forecast for the next few days. The skin uses the Weather.com API for its weather information, so you can be sure that you’re always getting the most accurate and up-to-date forecast.

I find the Sienna 2.0 skin’s highlight is its visual appearance — a card-shaped design that resembles frosted glass without obscuring my wallpaper. The skin is also highly customizable, with options to change the temperature units, the location, and even the format of the sunrise and sunset clocks. On the functional front, you can right-click on the skin to access the settings menu, where you can change the location and other options. The skin is also collapsible, so you can hide it when you don’t need it and expand it when you want to see the forecast. If you’re looking for a weather widget that is both beautiful and functional, Sienna 2.0 is an excellent choice.

Rainmeter has it all

Rainmeter is more than just a tool for making your desktop look pretty. It’s a powerful utility that adds a wealth of new functionality to your Windows experience. Using skins, you can create a desktop that is tailored to your specific needs, with at-a-glance access to all the information and tools you use most. Whether you want to monitor your system’s performance, stay up to date with the latest news, or just have a more beautiful and organized desktop, Rainmeter can help you achieve the goal. It’s a testament to the power of community-driven development and a must-have tool for any Windows user who wants to enhance their user experience.