How-To: Deck Out Your Desktop with the 12 Best Rainmeter Skins

Posted 01/25/2010 at 11:00pm | by Paul Lilly

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Carbon Fiber Meter

Carbon Fiber Meter only does two things: Display CPU and Memory usuage. We only wish it threw GPU vitals into the mix, because it's ideally suited for car tweakers and overclockers alike, two hobbies which often run parallel.

http://customize.org/rainmeter/34232

Terminator

Can't bring yourself to toss out those Terminator VHS tapes? Then this is the skin for you, but you better hurry, because we don't know how long it will be hosted. The main page for the popular Terminator skin no longer shows up on Customize.org, but the original download link still works (see below), so grab it while you can. Then plaster your desktop with a handful of applets, including the obligatory system monitor and calendar, but also a pretty extensive control panel. In the screenshot above, we plucked a Terminator wallpaper off of Google images and combined the skin with Rainmeter's bundled Wing Firefox theme, which essentially adds the funky looking clock you see in the middle.

http://customize.org/download/files/62811/Terminator_theme.zip

Fade to Black

A great looking skin on white backgrounds, Fade to Black offers a respectable number of applets. Not as varied as Enigma or Xpert 2, but in addition to system monitors, email, RSS feeds, and various other odds and ends, Fade to Black throws a curveball by including a tastefully framed image scroller. Configure it to scroll through vacation pictures to help make it through the work day.

http://customize.org/rainmeter/skins/62461

Facebook Notifcations

At this stage in the social networking game, it's a safe bet you're using Facebook, and this skin will allow you to keep tabs on what's going on without checking your account every 15 minutes. Nothing more, nothing less. To configure it, sign into your Facebook account and go to your Notifications page. Under Subscribe to Notifications, click the RSS URL and copy it to your clipboard. Next, open up Facebook.ini from the skin you just downloaded. Under variables, you'll see an entry that reads:

URL=CHAANNGEE MEEEE

Can you guess what to do? Replace the entry with your notifications RSS feed and don't forget to refresh Rainmeter.

http://customize.org/rainmeter/skins/63206

Tic-Tactual Encapsulated

We can't quite put our finger on it, but there's just something about spheres that screams 'high-tech.' That's exactly what Tic-Tactual Encapsulated offers, and while it's a shame there aren't a bunch of applets to play with, you can put the month, date, time, and day of week in separate bubbles. This one works well with just about any sci-fi theme.

http://customize.org/rainmeter/skins/49256

Seven Dock

Hands down one of our favorite skins, Seven Dock is not only highly useful, it's also great for squashing those OCD tendencies. How so? Well, if you were so inclined, you could wipe out all the icons on your desktop, hide the taskbar, and simply make do with a cleanly organized dock. It's fully customizable, from the icons to the shortcuts, though getting it to open directly to My Computer is a little tricky. You'll first navigate to the skin's folder, which is called Mega, not Seven Dock. Open up Mega.ini and scroll down to the FreeCommander entry. It should look like this:

Soft13.txt='Disque C'
Soft13=!execute [%ProgramFiles%\Custom\FreeCommander\Freecommander.exe

This is the entry we want to change, both because we like the icon it's already associated with, and because we're not running FreeCommander. To get it to jump into My Computer rather than your C: drive, here's what you'd change it to:

Soft13.txt='My Computer'
Soft13=!execute [%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /e,::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}]

From now own, clicking on the disk icon will open up My Computer. Change the other entries as you see fit, including both the name and location, and replace any of the icons using PNG images sized 265x265 pixels.

http://ghenarys.deviantart.com/art/Seven-Dock-for-Rainmeter-80408651