FAQ
Rainmeter is a windows desktop customization and system monitoring tool that allows users to create their own or download and install widgets also called themes made by other users. The great thing with Rainmeter is that it allows extensive personalization of your desktop beyond what any other customization software has ever achieved.
Examples of what Rainmeter widgets can do include:
- weather forecasting
- launching programs and opening paths via desktop widgets
- system monitoring including Battery, CPU, GPU, HDD, RAM, GPU and CPU Temperatures, etc
- audio visualization and players
- Network data monitoring
- RSS feed display on your desktop
- time and Date display
some rainmeter skins contain various types of widgets with a similar design. These types of skins are known as suites and are often the best types of rainmeter skins you will find. Check out our suites section to check them out.
Rainmeter on its own is a very lightweight program and doesn’t affect your system performance at all during normal use or while gaming. The amount of system resources used by Rainmeter is highly dependent on the skins you have loaded on your desktop and the power of your machine. There are several factors which determine whether a skin will affect your pc performance or not, they include:
- Skins with higher refresh rates tend to use more system resources
- Skins that use many high definition graphics also use more RAM but this isn’t really an issue for modern windows computers
- Animated skins also tend to have more impact on your CPU if not properly sized and compressed by the developer
- Also, poorly optimized skins made by inexperienced developers tend to use more resources
- The more skins you have loaded on your desktop, the more likely Rainmeter will impact your CPU
Ultimately the most important factor that will determine if Rainmeter impacts your PC performance is the power of your computer. Most modern windows machines won’t experience any performance hit at all even if the skins you are using have the above mentioned points, you will barely notice any impact on your system even with many skins loaded.
Rainmeter is a well-optimized program and will run without any noticeable impact on your laptop battery life. Just like any other software, you wouldn’t expect it to have a “Zero” impact on your battery. Some skins however tend to increase the performance requirement of Rainmeter and thus affect your battery life. The points below tell you which skins will affect your battery life and how to prevent that:
- Animated skins will have a higher battery impact than non-animated ones
- The more skins you have loaded on your desktop, the more likely Rainmeter will affect your battery life
- Skins that monitor system resources in real-time tends to use slightly more resourced than static ones
To conclude, it’s preferable to use Rainmeter and any other customization software when your laptop is not running on battery, but if you are using a lightweight skin, then the difference in battery savings is insignificant.
Rainmeter doesn’t slow down your computer, it is a well-optimized software designed to have barely any impact on your PC’s performance. If you notice that your computer is slowing down or feels clunky while using Rainmeter, it could be due to one of the following 3 reasons:
- You are overdoing it with the skins, meaning you have too many of them loaded at once
- You have animated skins which are poorly optimized for performance or use HD graphics as frames
- Your computer is getting old and can’t handle much software running at once
To fix these issues, simply use fewer skins at once and use skins that don’t impact your pc performance too much.
Rainmeter Doesn’t contain any virus and has been tested for security issues using various renowned antivirus software such as Bitdefender, Kaspersky, Norton, etc. Just make sure that you download your copy of rainmeter from trusted websites or preferably from the official rainmeter website rainmeter.net
Sometimes, however, you might install a skin and your antivirus alerts you of potential malignant software. for the most part, this is usually a false alert because some antivirus software considers certain rainmeter addons as a malignant. this happens a lot with skins that use RainRGB or other .exe Rainmeter addons.
To be safe, just make sure you download your skins from trusted sources such as rainmeterui.com or deviantart.com
The latest build of Rainmeter is compatible with all Windows versions starting from Windows XP, windows vista, windows 7, windows 8/8.1, and Windows 10.
To uninstall Rainmeter, open your control panel by typing “control panel” in your taskbar search. Make sure your control panel view is set to “Category”. under “Programs” click on “uninstall a program”. Now search for Rainmeter and uninstall it from there. You will have two options when trying to uninstall Rainmeter. The first option is to uninstall rainmeter and not delete your skins and settings from your computer and the second option is to delete everything, make sure to select accordingly.
Another way to uninstall Rainmeter is to head to this location ==>> C:\Program Files\Rainmeter Here you will find the uninst.exe, simply double click it and follow the steps to uninstall rainmeter.
You should absolutely use Rainmeter if you want to monitor your system stats, display the weather and clock on your desktop, enhance your PC with amazing audio visualizers or you simply want to customize your pc to make it different and stunning. There just isn’t any other desktop customization software available on windows that compares to Rainmeter.
Rainmeter is so lightweight that you won’t affect your pc performance at all even while gaming. Rainmeter also comes packed with a bunch of other cool features and you can even create your very own skins.
If you can’t drag a rainmeter skin, it is often due to one of the following reasons:
- The skin has been set to draggable or has a click-through function attributed to it
- the skins use “mousedownactions” which prevents you from being able to click and drag it.
In case 1, open Rainmeter manager by double-clicking the Rainmeter icon in the system tray. Locate the skin that has the issue and select it. On the bottom right section of Rainmeter manager, you will see a set of boxes. Make sure the “Draggable” is checked and the “Click-through” is unchecked
In Case 2, right-click on the skin and select “edit skin” or locate the skin in Rainmeter Manager then right-click on it and select edit. A text file should open up at this point, if not then open it with notepad. look for every instance where “mousedownaction” is present and replace the down with up. example leftMouseDownAction ==>> LeftMouseUpAction. save the file once you are done and refresh the skin, you should be able to drag it around now.
To unload a single Rainmeter skin, simply right-click on that skin and select “Unload skin” from the pop-up window. If you wish to unload all your skins at once, then follow the steps below:
- Double-click on the Rainmeter icon in the tray icons to open Rainmeter manager
- Select the layout tab and input a name for your new layout (example “OFF”)
- Tick the “save as empty layout” box and save your new layout
- Now each time you wish to unload all your Rainmeter skins at once, all you have to do is to load this empty layout
Another way to unload a single skin is to find that skin in Rainmeter manager under the skin tab and on the top right corner, you will see an unload button.
The latest build of Rainmeter works on all windows version and architecture (32bit & 64bit) starting from windows 7 and above. In case you are running windows 7, just make sure you have service pack one and platform update installed.
If you notice that Rainmeter is using a lot of your CPU, then you should make sure you are not using too many skins at once and that they are not full of animations.
Poorly animated skins that use high refresh rates and HD graphics for their animation frames are usually the culprit in most cases of high Rainmeter CPU usage.
Sometimes skins that measures your network activities as well as system resources in realtime tends to affect your CPU more.
To check if a skin has a high refresh rate, right-click on the skin, and select “edit Skin” a note pad test file should open now. Around the start of the page, you will find “Update=”. the default update rate for rainmeter is “1000” the smaller the update rate, the more that particular Rainmeter skin will affect your CPU. increasing the refresh rate of a rainmeter skin will make it update less frequently and this might not be ideal for skins that require realtime response such as Audio visualizers.
And of course the more modern and powerful your windows PC is, the less likely you will notice any impact to your CPU by rainmeter even while running skins with high refresh rates.
The fastest way to open the Rainmeter manager is by double-clicking on the rainmeter tray icon. You can also open the Rainmeter manager from a loaded skin by right-clicking on the skin and selecting “Manage skin” from the pop-up window.
To update your version of Rainmeter to the latest release, simply head over to rainmeter.net you will have the option to download between the beta release and the final release version. The Final release tends to be the more stable version but I would recommend you download the beta version instead. This is because the beta version has newer features, bugs fixed and will support the latest skins you download.
To find out which version of Rainmeter you are running, simply right-click on the Rainmeter tray icon and select “About”. Then select the Version tab on the popup window that appears, you should be able to find all the relevant information you need there.