Desktop HUD: What Is It and Why You Need One

Rainmeter is a powerful tool for creating beautiful and informative pages that track system health, RSS feeds, and more. Here's how to create an attractive HUD display like Iron Man for your Windows desktop. The Rainmeter Windows Customization Program is a major star in the best desktop franchises, and for a good reason. It looks great with many configuration options that allow you to customize almost every pixel on your desktop to your liking. It is powerful and efficient once installed but not very user-friendly.

What is a desktop HUD?

A desktop HUD is a Heads-Up Display, a HUD that shows information to you when you need it, so you don't have to take your eyes off the screen to see what's going on. The HUD can show anything you like—and that can mean just about anything: random icons and images, an empty desktop, or whatever else you can think of. Just like any good 3D art or illustration, a HUD has to be eye-catching. It has to work for you and the people around you. It's not a tool for showing off or showing off your technical know-how. You want it to show information in a way that other people can understand. A well-designed HUD should be helpful to the vast majority of people, not just experts.

Why do you need a desktop HUD?

Rainmeter itself is excellent, but there are more reasons to get a HUD beyond the visual impact of adding a flashy visual highlight to your desktop. Rainmeter's hidden menu system has many useful commands that you can use to modify your desktop, from changing which sections of the taskbar you have visible to adjusting the look of your app launchers and your buttons. Here's how to make a custom desktop HUD in about ten minutes. What You Need Rainmeter Installer Before you can get to the HUD settings, you'll need to get Rainmeter installed. Install the installer either in the Applications folder or in the Default Program folder of your Windows computer, depending on how you plan to use it. Next, enter the settings of your application of choice in the Settings menu.

How to set up a desktop HUD?

After installing the Rainmeter desktop app from the Windows Store, you'll need to configure a few things. For starters, you'll need to install a few plugins. The Rainmeter Widget and Widget Packs include all the plugins you'll need to build a customizable desktop app. A few plugins require administrator privileges (but you don't need admin privileges to use Rainmeter plugins), so you can configure these when you install the app. It's a good idea to do it now.

Rainmeter comes with a simple skin package called ilstro. If you're not interested in Illustro, there are skin packs you can download before you start.

Once you have found the skin you want, you can install it in two ways. Some skin suites include a .rmskin file. You can double-click the file and click Install. You can also apply the new design right after the installation.

To continue diving, check out the Rainmeter documentation here. There are plenty of instructions on how the rainmeter works, creating your skins, and changing. You should also check out the Rainmeter forums to find helpful instructions and ideas to go in the right direction. You don't have to do all of this to use Rainmeter’s default skins, but the community is constructive if you decide to make your own.

Conclusion

Making your desktop Heads-Up display from scratch is not easy. But customizing already available skins and widgets is easy and saves the time of creating from scratch. Although, you should always try to find skins and widgets in the community because why should we waste our time making something that has already been created by someone else and is ready for your use.