Rainmeter has some amazing themes, but this shows you methods to get a TRULY different look!

Removing the Taskbar

The taskbar is often in the way of a clean looking desktop and we can remove it for those minimalists out there.

• Use NirCMD https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html
• Download NirCMD https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd-x64.zip

This command line tool allows us to modify Windows in ways that we normally aren’t able to. Launch the nircmd.exe file and it will ask to copy itself to the Windows directory.

Note: Auto-hide taskbar BEFORE removing it!

Command to “remove” the taskbar

nircmd.exe win trans class Shell_TrayWnd 256

Command to restore the taskbar

nircmd.exe win trans class Shell_TrayWnd 255

Install Rainmeter

Official Site: https://www.rainmeter.net/

Download and install from mainpage or use Winget (below).

winget install -e Rainmeter.Rainmeter

Rainmeter Skins

There are multiple download sites for Rainmeter skins, but here are some that I use.

• Rainmeter DeviantArt group (downloads require an account)
• Rainmeter forums
• GitHub #rainmeter-skin topic

Using Rainmeter Skins

After you download the skin that includes the *.rmskin file. You install it by opening it. (Note: Some skins are inside zip files and require extraction of the rmskin file.)

Enable the components you want and edit the ini files to your needs.

Issues

Rainmeter has been around since 2001! This means a lot of skins are out of date. A common bug I see with themes is they use an old weather API which is no longer open. This means most of the weather widgets do NOT work! Keep this in mind when using old skins that haven’t been updated in years.

There’s a non-exhaustive list of working weather skins on the Rainmeter forum.

Walkthrough Video