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Installation

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Kurou edited this page Jul 9, 2026 · 2 revisions

Installation

Two ways in: drop in a prebuilt DLL, or build it yourself.

Requirements

  • Windows 10/11, x64
  • Rainmeter (64-bit — the only edition)
  • NVIDIA GPU metrics: NVML/NVAPI ship with the GeForce/Studio driver — nothing extra
  • AMD GPU metrics: ADLX/ADL2 ship with the Adrenalin driver — nothing extra
  • Intel GPU metrics: IGCL (ControlLib.dll) ships with the Arc/Xe driver — nothing extra
  • No kernel driver, no service, no elevated install. It's one DLL.

Option A — drop in the DLL

  1. Get NativeHardwareMonitor.dll (a release download, or your own build).
  2. Copy it into %APPDATA%\Rainmeter\Plugins\ (C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Roaming\Rainmeter\Plugins\).
  3. Restart Rainmeter.
  4. Reference it from any measure with Plugin=NativeHardwareMonitor.

That's the whole install. The plugin loads on demand when a skin uses it.

Option B — build from source

Toolchain: Visual Studio 2022, C++17, x64. No CMake — MSBuild against the .vcxproj directly.

# from the repo root
& "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\18\Community\MSBuild\Current\Bin\MSBuild.exe" `
  NativeHardwareMonitor.vcxproj /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform=x64

The VS2022 install folder here is literally named 18, not 2022. If your path differs, find it with & "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vswhere.exe" -latest -property installationPath.

  • Output: x64\Release\NativeHardwareMonitor.dll
  • Post-build: the project auto-copies the DLL to %APPDATA%\Rainmeter\Plugins\ with a plain copy /Y.
  • Links against: sdk\rainmeter\API\x64\Rainmeter.lib, advapi32.lib, psapi.lib, iphlpapi.lib.

Deploying over a running Rainmeter

Rainmeter keeps the DLL loaded, so the post-build copy fails with "file in use" while it's running. Stop it, build, restart:

Stop-Process -Name Rainmeter -Force
# ...run the MSBuild command above...
Start-Process "$env:ProgramFiles\Rainmeter\Rainmeter.exe"

Vendored SDKs

Everything needed to build is already in sdk/ — nothing to fetch.

Dir Library Role
sdk/rainmeter/ Rainmeter plugin SDK RainmeterAPI.h + Rainmeter.lib
sdk/nvml/ NVIDIA Management Library Primary NVIDIA GPU metrics
sdk/nvapi/ NVIDIA API NVIDIA fallback
sdk/adlx/ AMD Display Library eXtended Primary AMD GPU metrics
sdk/adl/ AMD Display Library Legacy AMD fallback
sdk/igcl/ Intel Graphics Control Library Intel GPU metrics

Next: Configuring Measures.

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