A Rainmeter skin is a small window that sits on your Windows desktop and shows something: a clock, CPU and memory meters, the weather, the song that is playing, a row of launcher icons. Rainmeter is the free program that runs them. You can load any number of skins at once, from different authors, and drag each one where you want it.
The facts below come from rainmeter.net and the Rainmeter manual, checked on October 16, 2026.
What Rainmeter is
Rainmeter is open source under the GNU GPL v2 and has been free since February 2001. It runs only on Windows; the manual says there are no plans for macOS or Linux. The current release on rainmeter.net is 4.5.28, which runs on Windows 7 through Windows 11.
A release candidate of Rainmeter 5.0 is also on the site. It adds sharp skins on high-DPI screens, a zoom setting per skin and a dark mode interface. The catch is the system floor. Version 5.0 needs 64-bit Windows 10 version 1903 or later, or Windows 11, so older and 32-bit PCs stay on 4.5.
What a skin can and cannot change
Every skin is built from the same parts. Measures collect information, from your computer, a website or a text file. Meters draw it: text, images, bars, graphs, buttons. Bangs are commands that let a skin control other skins or apps, and variables are the short lines of text you edit to change a skin’s look. A skin’s code is plain text, so you can open it in any editor.
The manual is just as clear about the limits:
- The Windows visual style stays as it is. The taskbar, the Start button, desktop icons and File Explorer are out of reach.
- Rainmeter is not a window manager, so arranging open windows or managing workspaces is a job for other tools.
- A skin does not replace the app behind it. A music skin can pause or skip a track, but only while the player runs.
That is why the desktop in a screenshot usually takes more than one download. The manual notes that you usually “cannot download and apply someone else’s amazing desktop transformation in one click”, and that most people who share a setup link the programs, icons and wallpapers they used. For the parts Rainmeter cannot reach, start with the settings Windows already has; our guide to Windows 11 customization covers them.
Where to find skins
Rainmeter installs with a few starter skins, a suite called illustro. For more, the project’s own Discover page points to these places:
- DeviantArt, which the page calls one of the largest collections of Rainmeter resources. It links the Rainmeter group’s curated gallery and a search of everything tagged Rainmeter.
- The Rainmeter forums, where, the page says, many of the newest skins are developed.
- The r/Rainmeter community on Reddit, for ideas and shared setups, and its unofficial Discord server.
The same page adds a warning: “As with anything you download from the internet, a certain amount of caution is advised when downloading and installing Rainmeter skins you get from other than rainmeter.net directly.” More on that below.
How to install a Rainmeter skin
Skins arrive in one of two forms. The manual says most skin sites now require an .rmskin package; older skins often come as a plain archive, such as a ZIP file, that you unpack yourself.
From an .rmskin file
The Rainmeter installer links the .rmskin extension to its Skin Installer, so this takes a double-click.
- Double-click the
.rmskinfile. - Read the list in the install dialog. It shows every part the package will add: one or more skins, sometimes a layout, and sometimes plugins.
- To keep your current desktop as it is, clear Apply included layout if the package has one. A layout sets which skins are loaded and where.
- Click Install.
If a skin with the same name is already installed, the installer moves the old one to a Backup folder first. On a portable installation, start SkinInstaller.exe from the Rainmeter program folder and browse to the file.
From a ZIP, RAR or 7z archive
This is the old way. Before Rainmeter 1.3, every skin went in by hand, and those skins still work.
- Extract the archive. The manual suggests 7-Zip, which opens almost any archive type.
- Read any readme file inside. If there is none, find the folder named after the skin.
- Move that folder into
C:\Users\YourName\Documents\Rainmeter\Skins. - Right-click the Rainmeter icon in the notification area and select Refresh all.
Load, arrange and remove skins
An installed skin is not always on screen yet. To load one, right-click any skin or the Rainmeter icon in the notification area, pick the skin’s folder and then its .ini file. If a skin uses right-click for something else, hold Ctrl while you right-click to get Rainmeter’s menu.
- Move a skin by dragging it. Rainmeter remembers each skin’s position, even after you unload it.
- Variants are other
.inifiles in the same folder, such as a one-disk or two-disk version. Only one variant of a skin runs at a time. - Settings in the context menu cover position, snap to edges and transparency.
- Manage, opened with a left click on the tray icon, lists your whole library. It also saves and loads layouts.
- Unload skin takes a skin off the desktop. To delete it from your computer, open its folder from the Manage window and remove the files.
One thing to know before you customize: colours, fonts and other options live inside each skin’s own files, not in Rainmeter’s settings. A saved layout does not keep those changes, so back up the skin files too.
Install skins safely
Most skins are text files, but a package can carry more than that. Plugins are .dll programs that add features Rainmeter does not have built in, and the Skin Installer copies them into Rainmeter’s Plugins folder. The manual’s page on distributing skins says that “malware disguised as Rainmeter skins has been an occasional concern for the community”.
The .rmskin format helps. Rainmeter checks every package before installing it, to make sure it was made by the Skin Packager and was not modified or tampered with afterwards. So the check proves the package is intact. It says nothing about what the skin, or any plugin that came with it, will do once it runs on your PC.
- Prefer
.rmskinpackages to loose archives. - Read the install dialog. A plugin from an author you do not know deserves a second look.
- Download from the places Rainmeter’s Discover page lists, and from the author’s own page rather than a mirror.
- Use the About window’s log, under Open log in Manage, to see what a skin is doing and what errors it reports.