This section is for C/C++, and C# developers. If you don't know what that means, you probably shouldn't be here :-).

Plugin SDK

The Rainmeter plugin software development kit contains the necessary tools and examples to build plugins in C/C++ and C#. Note that plugins built with the SDK below require Rainmeter 2.3 beta or higher.

Download: SDK-2012-02-22

To install the tools required to build the plugins, follow the "Build tools" section of the Source Code page.

Note: To build 64bit C/C++ plugins with Visual C++ Express, you must right-click on the plugin projects, select Properties -> Configuration Properties -> General, and change the "Platform Toolset" field to "Windows7.1SDK" for the Release\x64 and Debug\x64 configurations. With Visual Studio, no changes are necessary.

The API documentation is available through the links on the right. Please read through the documentation before releasing plugins.

Plugin SDK Changelog

Feb 22, 2012

• Added support for ExecuteBang.

Feb 5, 2012

• Initial release.

Old plugin API

The SDK above uses the "new" plugin API introduced with Rainmeter 2.3 beta and above. The new API, among many other improvements and features, adds support for DynamicVariables. In addition, the new C# API fixes several issues with the old C# API. If your C/C++ plugin is using the old API, we recommend that you consider upgrading to the new API. If your C# plugin is using the old API, we recommend that you upgrade to the new API as soon as possible.