Heres how to use it to make an awesome, Iron Man-like HUD for your Windows desktop.

Update:Rainmeter 4.0dropped earlier this week, so we decided to overhaul our beginners guide.

Windows customization appRainmeteris a frequent star ofour featured desktop seriesand with good reason.

Its powerful and effective once set up, but its not very user-friendly.

This walkthrough will get you started down the road to desktop-customized bliss without any hair pulling.

Once its installed, the single biggest hurdle in getting started with Rainmeter is its terminology.

Theyre small apps that live on your desktop underneath your windows.

You could have an RSS skin, a Now Playing skin, a clock skin, and so on.

Some skins can be very complex, resembling little applications in themselves.

The term skin refers to what the widget is rather than what it looks like.

For example, Rainmeter comes with a default skin suite called illustro (seen above on the left).

Layouts:A layout defines the position of your skins on the desktop.

Rainmeter comes with a simple skin suite called illustro, so well use that in many of our examples.

you’ve got the option to start with ourFeatured Desktopseries, where readers share their favorite customized workspaces.

Once youve found some skins you like, there are two ways to install them.

Some skin suites comes with an .rmskin file.

you could also choose to immediately apply the new layout as soon as the installation is done.

Other skins have to be installed manually.

These usually come in a .zip or .rar archive and dont contain an .rmskin file.

For those, go through this:

Download the .zip file containing the skins you want.

Extract the contents of the folder to \Documents\Rainmeter\Skins on your box.

When its finished extracting, right-hit the Rainmeter icon in your system tray.

Now, youll have new skins available in Rainmeter.

Others require a little tweaking.

Well go over the basics for both, using illustro and Enigma.

you might also add a new skin in just a couple clicks.

Go to illustro > Recycle Bin.

hit Recycle Bin.ini

If you want to remove a skin, right hit it and hit Unload Skin.

Youll also notice when you right hit a skin that each has its own prefs menu.

Here, you’re able to tweak a bunch of handy prefs.

Transparency:This lets you customize how much you’re free to see through a skin.

Hide on mouseover:This will hide the skin whenever your cursor hovers over it.

Draggable:This lets you move your skins around.

Once youre happy with where theyre placed, turn this off to lock the skin where you want it.

Click through:When this option is enabled, you wont be able to hit the skin.

Instead, youll press whatever is below it.

This is similar to Hide on mouseover, except you could still see your skins.

Because nothings worse than a skin thats one pixel off.

You might want to turn Draggable off afterwards so you dont accidentally move anything around.

For some suites, youll need to dig through configuration files, while others have simpler options panels.

Heres how to edit both, using the illustro suite andthe Enigma suiteas examples.

Editing Skins Through Config Files

The illustro suite can only be edited with each skins configuration files.

That means editing its configuration file.

To do this, run with this:

Right tap on the Disks skin and hit Edit Skin.

This will open up the 2 Disks.ini configuration file in Notepad.

Right-hit the Disk skin and click Refresh skin.

If you want to dive deeper, you’re free to check outthe Rainmeter documentation here.

You should alsocheck out the Rainmeter forumsto find helpful users who can point you in the right direction.

To tweak these options, take these actions:

Right punch an open Enigma skin.

Along the side, theres a bar of icons.

poke the gear icon to tweak things like which disk drives to monitor or where to store your notes.

poke the music icon to change which tool you play music from.

To enter the layout feature, stick to this:

Right-click any open skin.

Go to Rainmeter and click Manage.

smack the Layouts tab.

Here, you’re able to back up your current layout with a new name.

Then, you could create a separate layout with someawesome Mass Effect themed skinsfor when you want to play.