How to change background image of Rainmeter system.ini

Rainmeter is a useful tool for creating desktop widgets. I'm using system.ini skin, it's transparent but I want some opaque background.

The system.ini file has these lines:

[Rainmeter]
; This section contains general settings that can be used to change how Rainmeter behaves.
Update=1000
Background=#@#Background.png
; #@# is equal to Rainmeter\Skins\illustro\@Resources
BackgroundMode=3
BackgroundMargins=0,34,0,14

There's no 'Skins' directory under 'Rainmeter', it's under 'Rainmeter/Default'. I found the location of 'Background.png', put another image in there, and changed the line 'Background=' in system.ini but didn't work; the system skin just disappeared!

Tried another solution, put the new background image in the same folder with system.ini, and I changed background (in system.ini file) to this:

Background=MyBackground.png

But it's not working too. Any simple steps to change background for a skin please?

1 Answer

I found it out how.

Rainmeter has 2 directories after installation:

• Application installation folder, for example:C:\Program Files\Rainmeter
• Data folder, for example:C:\Users\myusername\Documents\Rainmeter

The installation folder is know during installation steps, the data folder can be found as following:

• Right-click Rainmeter icon in system tray
• Click 'Edit settings'
• Right in the first few lines of the settings file, there is a line starting with:SkinPath=That is the correct path to 'Skins' folder, not the one in application folder, the one in application folder is Rainmeter\Defaults\Skins which it not where to modify the widgets and data for widgets.

Change the default background to opaque:

• Go to skin path folder
• Go to illustro\@Resources inside it
• Copy Background.png to Background2.png
• Open the file Background2.png with mspaint
• Ctrl+S to save (this makes it opaque, coz mspaint can't save transparency)
• Right-click on a skin UI, choose 'Edit skin'
• Change Background=#@#Background.png to Background=#@#Background2.png
• Right-click on the skin UI again, choose 'Refresh skin'
• Done!

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