Rainmeter 4.2


The following are the changes for the 4.2 beta version of Rainmeter. You can safely install the new 4.2 beta version right over top of your existing Rainmeter 4.1 or earlier installation, and nothing you have done will be lost or changed. There is never any need to uninstall earlier versions of Rainmeter to use the newest version.

Note: As of Rainmeter 4.0, Windows XP and Windows Vista are no longer supported by the application.

Changes in Rainmeter Beta 4.2


Additional details on important changes during the beta cycle can always be found at Change Announcements.

July 3, 2018 - Revision 3110

  • RC24.2 Release Candidate 2
  • ChangedUsage Monitor plugin: Additional error trapping and logging.

July 1, 2018 - Revision 3108

  • RC14.2 Release Candidate 1
  • ChangedUsage Monitor plugin: Added some error trapping and logging to address rare cases where the perfomon data is not correctly returned for one update cycle, which could crash Rainmeter.
  • ChangedRainmeter: Added some error trapping and logging to address rare cases where the initial check for Rainmeter version updates when the computer is first started could crash Rainmeter if the computer's network configuration was not yet complete.

June 23, 2018 - Revision 3104

  • FixedUsageMonitor plugin: Corrected a bug caused in r3101.

June 23, 2018 - Revision 3101

  • FixedUsageMonitor plugin: Fixed an issue where the plugin would fail when Windows is using the French language, due to a conflict bug in the counters stored in perfmon for this language. This should also address any other languages that may have a similar problem in the future.

June 22, 2018 - Revision 3097

  • ChangedRainmeter: Added the full path to the currently running skin .ini file to the hidden window "title" of the config window. This is in support of plugins that may be written to use SendMessage() to detect if a particular config is running, and if so, to use the window title to retrieve the "variant" name of the running skin.
  • ChangedLanguages: Updated the Chinese Traditional language localizations.
  • FixedRainmeter: Corrected an issue where if Rainmeter was terminated, either due to a crash, or by using Task Manager, the Notification Area icon for Rainmeter would not be removed, and multiple "ghost" icons could result until you moved the cursor over them.

June 15, 2018 - Revision 3088

  • AddedLanguages: Added Arabic to supported localization languages.
  • ChangedRainmeter: Changed the file encoding of Rainmeter.ini from ANSI to UTF-16 LE (Unicode). Existing installations will be converted if needed when Rainmeter is started or Layouts are loaded. Details and an important note about backwards compatibility are at Change Announcements
  • ChangedFileView plugin: Relative paths are now supported with the ContextMenu command.
  • ChangedManage dialog: Removed the "Archive plugins to @Vault" option in the Settings dialog. This is not something most users will want to change.

    Note: This can still be controlled if desired, by using the following in Rainmeter.data:
    [SkinInstaller]
    ArchivePlugins=0/1

June 1, 2018 - Revision 3074

  • ChangedLanguages: Updated the Korean language localizations.
  • FixedNowPlaying: Corrected a problem with using the latest version of Spotify with NowPlaying.
  • FixedNowPlaying: Corrected an issue with the "rating" feature when using iTunes with NowPlaying.
  • FixedUsageMonitor: Fixed a small, slow memory leak with the plugin.
  • FixedUsageMonitor: Corrected some problems when disabling and enabling a measure using the plugin.

May 13, 2018 - Revision 3064

  • AddedBangs: Added several new bangs to allow "disabling" and "enabling" mouse actions on meters or the skin background. Documentation at Mouse Action state bangs.
  • ChangedAbout dialog: Changed the About / Version dialog to add the version number for Windows 10 (e.g. 1709, 1803) and the language and language code number currently being used in both Rainmeter and Windows. (e.g. English (1033)) Changed the references to the various paths and the Rainmeter.ini file to be clickable links.
  • ChangedUsageMonitor: Added Index=-1 to return the "average" of the instances of a counter, instead of the "sum total". The string value returned when this is used is now Average instead of Total.
  • ChangedUsageMonitor: Improved logging when Percent=1 is incorrectly used.
  • ChangedLanguages: Updated the Russian language localizations.
  • FixedMouse scroll actions: Fixed a bug where the detection of mouse scrolling would not be reset between two skins when the skins were "touching".
  • FixedUsageMonitor: Corrected an issue where the string value returned by the measure would continue to update when Disabled or Paused was used on the measure.
  • FixedUsageMonitor: Corrected an issue where a collision with the update of the plugin at the same time as the update of perfmon could cause incorrect values, or the string value not matching the number value.
  • FixedUsageMonitor: Corrected a problem where floating point number imprecision could result in a percentage being higher than 100%.

May 1, 2018 - Revision 3048

  • ChangedUsageMonitor: Blacklist and Whitelist have been changed to use the | (pipe) character as the separator, instead of , (comma).
  • ChangedUsageMonitor: Forced Alias=GPU and all measures where Percent=1 is used to set a MaxValue of 100 on the measure.
  • ChangedUsageMonitor: A problem with a particular counter in a category no longer will cause the entire category to fail to be read.
  • ChangedUsageMonitor: If Percent=1 is incorrectly used with an counter that has no _Total instance, the actual value will be returned instead of zero.
  • FixedUsageMonitor: Corrected a possible crash with measures that had PID translation automatically turned on such as Alias=GPU.
  • FixedUsageMonitor: Corrected an issue with PIDToName when used with languages other than English.

April 26, 2018 - Revision 3043

  • AddedUsageMonitor: Added new UsageMonitor plugin to interact with the Windows Performance Monitor. This plugin will deprecate the existing AdvancedCPU and PerfMon plugins, and should be used in place of them going forward. Documentation for this new plugin is at UsageMonitor.

April 19, 2018 - Revision 3040

  • ChangedLanguages: Updated the Malay, Chinese Simplified, and Japanese localizations.
  • ChangedRainmeter: Prevent a skin from updating as it is in the process of closing, which could potentially crash.
  • FixedSkin Installer: Corrected a design flaw where the skin installer could extract the wrong plugin .dll file(s) from a .rmskin when evaluating the version of a plugin.
  • FixedVariables: Corrected a bug when *escaping* nested variables.

February 9, 2018 - Revision 3029

  • AddedInputText: Added support for InputNumber and InputLimit as inline command overrides.
  • ChangedMeter: Fixed a rare bug causing Padding to not be included in the meter's W/H if the values for both padding and W/H were equal.
  • ChangedLanguages: Updated the PortugueseBrazil, Ukrainian, and Indonesian languages.

December 20, 2017 - Revision 3018

  • ChangedRainmeter: The @Vault\Plugins folder will now be automatically created if it does not exist when Rainmeter starts.
  • ChangedRainmeter: The @Vault\Plugins folder will no longer be scanned and treated as a normal skins folder in the config list in Manage.
  • ChangedLanguages: Updated the Spanish Modern localizations.
  • FixedAudioLevel Plugin: Corrected a bug that was not properly calculating a "device timeout" value.

December 13, 2017 - Revision 3011

  • AddedRainmeter: Added support for @Vault folder. See @Vault Folder for details.

December 11, 2017 - Revision 3004

  • AddedSysInfo: Added a new USER_LOGONTIME SysInfoType value to the SysInfo plugin. This is a timestamp number (number of seconds since January 1, 1601) reflecting the date and time the current user account logged onto Windows. Use with a Time measure to get a formatted string of the date/time, or subtract from the current time and use with an Uptime measure to get a formatted string of the elapsed time.
  • FixedNowPlaying: Improved CPU usage when using the latest versions of the iTunes player.

November 19, 2017 - Revision 3001

  • ChangedLanguages: Updated the Cyrillic Serbian, Latin Serbian, and Ukrainian localizations.
  • FixedNowPlaying: Corrected some issues when using the latest versions of the iTunes player.
  • FixedRainmeter: Fixed an issue where an undefined variable used as a bang sequence in an action would create an endless loop and crash Rainmeter.
  • FixedLua scripting: Corrected an issue where an error in an external library loaded with dofile() could return the wrong file and line number in the error log.