Download Rainmeter 2.0

After last week’s release candidate, Rainmeter’s final has now been released. Due to the fact that it has been two years since the program was revived and because of the large amount of changes, the version number has been increased from 1.4 to 2.0. Rainmeter is a program that allows you to customize the desktop of a Windows PC. For example, it is possible to display all kinds of information as a kind of overlay, such as free space on the hard disk, network activity, and whether there is new email. Functional applets can also be used to, for example, take notes or send tweets. The release notes for version 2.0 look like this:

Rainmeter 2.0 is now released!

We decided to jump from 1.4 to 2.0, both to celebrate the 2nd anniversary of Rainmeter “coming back from the dead” and to acknowledge the major improvements to Rainmeter in this version.

As always, Rainmeter is fully “backwards compatible”, and you can just install the new version right over the top of your existing Rainmeter 1.3 or 1.4. Rainmeter is fully XP/Vista/Win7 compatible, and the installer supports both 32bit and 64bit versions.

What’s new in Rainmeter 2.0

Rainmeter is now just one integrated installer package.
No longer do you need to download a different installer for 32bit, 64bit or “portable” installations. The new Rainmeter installer will detect your version of Windows, and will offer appropriate choices as you are installing. Any runtime “libraries” required by Rainmeter or plugins will be installed only if you don’t already have them.

Change to how featured skin suites are distributed
We have changed the way “default skins” are distributed for Rainmeter. No longer are Enigma and Gnometer part of the build, but are added after you install Rainmeter from our Recommended Downloads pages. This allows us to reduce the size of the installer and the footprint of Rainmeter on your system if you don’t use Enigma, Gnometer or ABP, as well as providing a way to have the “Recommended Skin Suites” updated by the authors without having to wait for a release of Rainmeter.

New illustro “default / starter” skins
Of course there needs to be some skins distributed with the installer, so our wizard poiru has created a new set of skins called “illustro” which are automatically installed. These are designed to show off some of the capabilities of Rainmeter to a new user, be very simple to edit and change, and are fully commented so someone looking to get started with editing and creating Rainmeter skins has a good place to start and learn.

New plugins, and a new capability for C# programmers to create their own Rainmeter plugins.

InputText Plugin – Allows Rainmeter to accept user input in a customizable text box, and use this input many ways in your skins.

CoreTemp Plugin – Written by the author of the popular CoreTemp application. Monitor your CPU load and temperatures.

FolderInfo Plugin – Display information about folders on your system.

C#PluginTemplate – The Rainmeter project now includes an easy to use template for creating Rainmeter plugins using the C# language for programmers who want to dip their toes in the plugin waters without needing to know C++.

New “Script” measure integrates Lua scripting with Rainmeter! Use the Lua scripting language to add almost unlimited new functionality to your skins.

Many, many other additions and improvements to Rainmeter. A full list of changes is at History of changes. Also be sure to check out the improved Rain gauge 101and the reworked and up to date Rainmeter Manual.