Kenwardtown

I recently discovered Rainmeter, a desktop customization tool that lets you use some really nice looking gadgets. I wanted a simple skin to show disk free space.

I have five volumes, I could have manually written a custom skin. (Rainmeter skins are INI files.) That would involve setting a measure section for each disk and a in another section define how the output looks. Or I could take the much more time consuming task of writing a PowerShell script to iterate through my disks and write the skin INI file.

Download RainmeterDisksSkin.ZIP

The body of the script:

# Stop on the first error
$ErrorActionPreference = "Stop"

$RainmeterPath = [environment]::getfolderpath("mydocuments") + "\Rainmeter\Skins\"
$SkinName = "Kenward"
$FileName = "disks.ini"

If (-Not (Test-Path $($RainmeterPath + $SkinName))) {
    Set-Location $RainmeterPath
    mkdir $SkinName
    }

$OutFile = $RainmeterPath + $SkinName + "\" + $FileName
$Disks = Get-Volume | where {$_.DriveType -eq "Fixed"} | sort -Property DriveLetter
$Disks

$Header = @"
[Rainmeter]
Update=1000

[Variables]
vFontName=Segoe UI Light
vFontColor=255,255,255,255
vSolidColor=0,0,0,128
vFontSize=14
vStringCase=Lower
"@

$MeterCommon = @"
`n[MeterDriveInfo]
NumOfDecimals=0
FontFace=#vFontName#
FontSize=#vFontSize#
Meter=String
X=0
Y=0
FontColor=#vFontColor#
SolidColor=#vSolidColor#
AntiAlias=1
AutoScale=1
StringCase=#vStringCase#
"@

Out-File -FilePath $Outfile -InputObject $Header

foreach ($Disk in $Disks) {
    Out-File -FilePath $Outfile -Append -InputObject "`n[MeasureFreeDiskSpace$($Disk.DriveLetter)]"
    Out-File -FilePath $Outfile -Append -InputObject "Measure=FreeDiskSpace"
    Out-File -FilePath $Outfile -Append -InputObject "Drive=$($Disk.DriveLetter):"
    Out-File -FilePath $Outfile -Append -InputObject "UpdateDivider=5"
    }

Out-File -FilePath $Outfile -Append -InputObject $MeterCommon

for ($i = 0; $i -le $Disks.count - 1; $i++)
    { 
    if ($i -eq 0) {
        $Output = "MeasureName=MeasureFreeDiskSpace$($Disks[$i].DriveLetter)"
        $TextValue = "text = ""$($Disks[$i].DriveLetter) drive %1B free"
        }
        else {
            $Output = "MeasureName$($i+1)=MeasureFreeDiskSpace$($Disks[$i].DriveLetter)"
            $TextValue += "#crlf#$($Disks[$i].DriveLetter) drive %$($i + 1)B free"
        }
    Out-File -FilePath $Outfile -Append -InputObject $Output
    }

Out-File -FilePath $Outfile -Append -InputObject $($TextValue + '"')

It’s very easy to access the registry in PowerShell. Usually you will want to read or write to the registry. These examples show how.

The registry key in these examples is “HKLM:\SOFTWARE\MyAwesomeKey“.

Suppose I wanted to read the data from a value called “Kenward”, into a variable. I would use this command:

$myvalue = (Get-ItemProperty -Path HKLM:\SOFTWARE\MyAwesomeKey).Kenward

Easy huh?

If you want to write to the registry, it’s also very easy, for example:

Set-ItemProperty -Path HKLM:\SOFTWARE\MyAwesomeKey -Name "Kenward" -Value "somevalue"

PowerShell is smart enough to know that you are writing a string to the registry, so that it automatically makes the value type a string (“REG_SZ”) in the registry.

If you write a number to the registry, like this:

Set-ItemProperty -Path HKLM:\SOFTWARE\MyAwesomeKey -Name "Meaning" -Value 42

It will make the value of type “REG_DWORD”, a 32 bit number.

If for some reason you need to force the value type to be a certain type, you can use the -type parameter of Set-ItemProperty to specify Binary, Dword, ExpandStrind, MultiString, None, Qword (64 bit number), String, or Unknown.

That’s it! Let me know if you have any questions.