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 require Rainmeter 4.5 or higher.

Download:

• Use git (git clone git@github.com:rainmeter/rainmeter-plugin-sdk.git)
• Download the current snapshot as a .zip archive.

The SDK can be built using Visual Studio 2022 or later (Visual Studio 2026 included). The C++ projects use whichever platform toolset the installed Visual Studio provides by default (v143, v144 or v145), so no project changes are needed when moving between versions. To force a specific toolset, build with msbuild /p:PlatformToolset=v143 or change it in the project properties. If you don't already have Visual Studio, you can download the free "Community" version here.

Documentation: The documentation is available at docs.rainmeter.net/developers