Load / unload skin with click or autohotkey / command line

[goodmeme]

Hi

First of all I love rainmeter, thanks for an amazing program.

I'm using rainmeter in I think quite a novel way to make my PC screen darker at night for reading; if I use the graphics card or monitor to do this, it messes up my screen's color calibration. Bizarrely there are no apps for Windows which will change brightness using a filter like this. Only graphics drivers and monitors both of which will mess up the calibration profiles for color sensitive work.

Funnily enough there are several apps already on Android which can overlay a dark transparent image, including 'privacy filter' which I use occasionally to both warm and darken my phone's screen.

I have edited a solid black, background skin to be 50% transparent. When I'm reading at night, I load the skin which covers both my monitors from 'manage rainmeter/ skins' I have it set to be always on top and click-through. It works great but its not a neat solution.

What I'd love is an easy way to load and uhload this skin without going into the manage menu. I'd like to either click on a panel. Or use autohotkey to load this skin.

Or will it require a new app? Anybody is welcome to run with the idea if they think they can code it, but please tell me if you do!

Now at the end of this post I'm thinking could I do it with rmskin packages somehow, or is there a neater solution already in rainmeter that I don't know about?

Thanks.

[Samalama]

Here's a method which uses autohotkey:

Compile an AHK script which looks like this, just replace illustro\Clock with the name of your skin, and also replace the path to Rainmeter.exe if necessary.

Code: Select all

Run, C:\Program Files\Rainmeter\Rainmeter.exe !ToggleFade "illustro\Clock"
ExitApp

Once compiled, create a shortcut to the new exe file. Right click on the shortcut and fill in the "Shortcut Key" field. Now every time time you press the shortcut you entered the specified skin will toggle between show and hide.

The purpose of compiling then creating a shortcut to the script is to make it unnecessary to run the script in the background at all times.

[poiru]

Here's a method which uses autohotkey:
...
The purpose of compiling then creating a shortcut to the script is to make it unnecessary to run the script in the background at all times.

Alternatively, you could simply create a shortcut directly to Rainmeter. For example:

Code: Select all

"C:\Program Files\Rainmeter\Rainmeter.exe" !ToggleFade "illustro\Clock"

[eclectic-tech]

@goodmeme

I wrote a simple skin (Dim-WIT) a short time ago, that you might find useful; it dims the screen either by time of day or manually. You can access the control for the skin by holding the CTRL key and moving the mouse to the center-left edge; the adjustment you see depends on whether you are in manual or automatic mode. While there, you can right-click on the adjustment to access the skin "settings" if you need to adjust it to dim your open windows.

I posted a short note in the forums, here but not too many takers.

Feel free to modify it to your needs.