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Lightest-weight method to prevent both fullscreen and maximized windows from covering rainmeters?

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nesherman
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Lightest-weight method to prevent both fullscreen and maximized windows from covering rainmeters?

Post by nesherman »

I have tried Desktop Coral and briefly messing around with Rainmeter's DesktopWorkArea options which had some scary consequences, but I can only find a solution which limits maximized windows, but does nothing for fullscreen applications.

Thanks very much for your time and suggestions!
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Active Colors
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Re: Lightest-weight method to prevent both fullscreen and maximized windows from covering rainmeters?

Post by Active Colors »

nesherman
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Re: Lightest-weight method to prevent both fullscreen and maximized windows from covering rainmeters?

Post by nesherman »

Active Colors wrote: May 8th, 2022, 6:09 pm I think this is your solution:
https://forum.rainmeter.net/viewtopic.php?t=23102#p122046
Am I correct in understanding that this allows rainmeters to dynamically change their z-position based on whether it detects that an application is full screen?

Please pardon my ignorance--I'm just trying to figure this out. Thank you for your time.
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Re: Lightest-weight method to prevent both fullscreen and maximized windows from covering rainmeters?

Post by Active Colors »

nesherman wrote: May 8th, 2022, 8:03 pm Am I correct in understanding that this allows rainmeters to dynamically change their z-position based on whether it detects that an application is full screen?

Please pardon my ignorance--I'm just trying to figure this out. Thank you for your time.
I understand, no worry! We all have been there.

What is needed now is actually you to provide more details about your specific use case. It would be extremely useful to know this in order to come up with the proper solution. Otherwise, we will be unproductively trying things out. The more details about your use case you provide, the more precise solution we will come up with. You should also keep in mind that Rainmeter is not a perfect solution for this, so, some compromises might be met in depending on your use case.

For example:
- what kind of app you have in full-screen mode - programs, or games);
- do you use those apps only in full-screen/maximized modes (like games), or you change the windows state constantly (like browsers or video players)
- do you want to detect ANY maximized and full-screen apps, or you want to make a custom list of apps and monitor those apps;
- do you want to make ALL your skins to become visible on top of those app, or only chosen ones;
- anything else that matters about your using behavior.
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Re: Lightest-weight method to prevent both fullscreen and maximized windows from covering rainmeters?

Post by Active Colors »

Also, I have to warn in advance about the games. Most of the full-screen games do not let anything else to be on top of them, including Rainmeter. And by default Rainmeter does not support setting itself on top of those full-screen games. However, this is not a dead end and there are some workarounds about this.

Easy solution 1: If you simply need to display things like FPS, CPU, GPU, RAM in games, the apps like MSI Afterburner and Riva Tuner Statistics Server are the best for this task.

Easy solution 2: If a game supports windowed mode, you can set your game to the windowed mode and maximize it to make it look like in a full-screen mode, and then Rainmeter skins will be able to show themselves on top of that.

Advanced solution: It requires some involvement and some time, but in the end you will be able to show your skins in games. Read this post and follow the links there https://forum.rainmeter.net/viewtopic.php?t=17336#p182303
nesherman
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Re: Lightest-weight method to prevent both fullscreen and maximized windows from covering rainmeters?

Post by nesherman »

Active Colors wrote: May 9th, 2022, 9:27 am Also, I have to warn in advance about the games. Most of the full-screen games do not let anything else to be on top of them, including Rainmeter. And by default Rainmeter does not support setting itself on top of those full-screen games. However, this is not a dead end and there are some workarounds about this.

Easy solution 1: If you simply need to display things like Apps like FPS, CPU, GPU, RAM in games, the apps like MSI Afterburner and Riva Tuner Statistics Server are the best for this task.

Easy solution 2: If a game supports windowed mode, you can set your game to the windowed mode and maximize it to make it look like in a full-screen mode, and then Rainmeter skins will be able to show themselves on top of that.

Advanced solution: It requires some involvement and some time, but in the end you will be able to show your skins in games. Read this post and follow the links there https://forum.rainmeter.net/viewtopic.php?t=17336#p182303
I have an area on the right-hand side of my second monitor that I want to keep visible at all times.

The only fullscreen applications I am moving over there are web browsers by hitting F11, which is something I use on a day to day basis. What I am hoping to do is find a solution that restricts that available space. Maximized windows are not a problem if I am using DesktopCoral, but it doesn't recognize fullscreen applications.

I did briefly experiment with DesktopWorkArea in rainmeter.ini, however I ran into some issues when trying to configure my display. Basically I was stabbing in the dark and hit something I didn't like. It was putting windows in all the wrong places--certainly due to user error--and I found myself unable to reverse the measure without rewriting the DesktopWorkArea, saving the ini, and then was forced to reboot my computer to see any changes. It spooked me, but I might be willing to give it another go if I could figure out how to write the variables for the intended monitor.

Maybe if I educate myself on DesktopWorkArea it might be a good solution in partnership with DesktopCoral? What do you think?
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Re: Lightest-weight method to prevent both fullscreen and maximized windows from covering rainmeters?

Post by Active Colors »

Now I see what you want.

Well, first of all, DesktopWorkArea feature built into Rainmeter is not that good as it is limited in functionality. As mentioned in the documentation, if you make any changes to taskbar (or if you interact with the taskabr that is also have the auto-hide option enabled) then your DesktopWorkArea will get reset until you refresh Rainmeter (there is an easy workaround to that though which will automatically refresh Rainmeter when this happens). Anyhow, Rainmeter is not a shell or window management software that hooks or integrates into system, thus, it is never going to "fight" over the reserved area like other designated for this apps. You can read more details about DesktopWorkArea (and the mentioned workaround) in this thread: https://forum.rainmeter.net/viewtopic.php?t=36185
So, DesktopWorkArea is a decent option if your taskbar is not being changed, for example, with auto-hide feature. However, if you implement the workaround for the change detection then you can probably live with that.
However, I would simply recommend having a different app that will reserve the desktop space better than Rainmeter, like DesktopCoral that you tried to use, or WorkspaceUtilities https://sourceforge.net/projects/workspaceutilities/

Secondly, speaking of full-screen apps, I have no idea how the full-screen windows work on fundamental level, so, I can't say whether reserving screen area in full-screen mode is going to be possible or not. So far, it looks that it is a hard task, because all the small tools that allow reserving screen areas (that I know of) do not reserve the area in full-screen mode. Thus, I can suggest checking larger "beast" tools for window management, some of which are:
I also have made a list of various window managers before. If you try them one by one you might find something that works: https://forum.rainmeter.net/viewtopic.php?p=205313#p205313
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Re: Lightest-weight method to prevent both fullscreen and maximized windows from covering rainmeters?

Post by Active Colors »

I have just recalled that there is a certain type of software called Virtual Monitors (or Virtual Displays), which should let you split your monitor into several virtual monitors. Hence, you can try using it to make a small virtual monitor on the right side of your screen where you want to keep your Rainmeter skins.

I think these should work with fullscreen windows:
https://www.ishadow.com
https://www.digitaltigers.com/ultraview-desktop-manager.asp

Not sure about these:
https://www.displayfusion.com
https://www.colorfulmatrix.com/overview/shutter_std
nesherman
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Re: Lightest-weight method to prevent both fullscreen and maximized windows from covering rainmeters?

Post by nesherman »

Active Colors wrote: May 10th, 2022, 1:30 pm I have just recalled that there is a certain type of software called Virtual Monitors (or Virtual Displays), which should let you split your monitor into several virtual monitors. Hence, you can try using it to make a small virtual monitor on the right side of your screen where you want to keep your Rainmeter skins.

I think these should work with fullscreen windows:
https://www.ishadow.com
https://www.digitaltigers.com/ultraview-desktop-manager.asp

Not sure about these:
https://www.displayfusion.com
https://www.colorfulmatrix.com/overview/shutter_std
I will definitely give some of these a shot. Thank you for your help :welcome: