Rainmeter 4.5.20 Build 3803

Overview

While manufacturers such as Microsoft spend a lot of time perfecting the UI of their operating systems, the truth of the matter is that it can never be perfect and it will never impress everyone who uses it. Eventually you get bored and want to spice up your desktop by implementing different themes or widgets. Manually installing themes can be rather cumbersome and it rarely ever works fine. Rainmeter is a software that takes theming to a whole new level and makes the whole process rather simple.

Installation

The setup file is only 1-1.5MB in size. Installation takes only a few seconds and is a rather straightforward setup. No adware is bundled. Rainmeter is only compatible with Windows and all its popular versions. It will not work on Mac OS or Linux.

Interface

Rainmeter has a rather simple UI at first but dig deeper down and you’ll find a plethora of options. To access Rainmeter you will have to right click the icon on the task bar. Through that menu you can access settings for all the themes installed. Here you can enable or disable various aspects of each individual theme. This can range from gadgets or other features. For more detailed settings you’ll have to edit configs for themes via notepad. This is only intended for advance users as even a small typo can make the theme unusable.

Pros

Rainmeter is a one of its kind software that offers theming like no other. There are well over a million different themes you can download from all over the internet. Themes can vary immensely from just offering simple widgets to a total makeover of your desktop. Moreover you aren’t limited to using one theme at a time. If there are certain aspects of various themes you like you can enable them individually and get the desktop you want. These themes offer gadgets that can range from telling the time to telling the GPU temperature or network speed. With each theme you get a different design so if something doesn’t catch your eye you can always look for another theme. Rainmeter does not bog your system down or consume a lot of system resources.

Cons

Setting up Rainmeter can be a rather daunting task. There’s no proper GUI through which you can get a preview of what the theme offers. To see it you will have to enable it. Furthermore to edit themes you will have to modify their config files through notepad which can be quite difficult to understand at first.

Alternatives

Windows Vista and 7 have built in gadgets and more can be downloaded from Microsoft. However these can consume a lot of system resources. Moreover as far as design goes, these gadgets don’t do a lot for your desktop and neither do they offer the same level of customization as Rainmeter. Another alternative worth mentioning is Auslogics Visual Styler.

Conclusion

Rainmeter is currently one of the best software you can use to give your desktop a visual makeover. There is a huge variety of themes available and the level of customization it offers is immense.