ColorPickle

Linux screen color picker. Pick a pixel or drag-select a region with a magnified picker, using any common color format. Launch to GUI or straight to picker.

Assign shortcut to launch the GUI or screen picker:

Features

• Fullscreen picker overlay with a magnified view of the area under the cursor
• Click to pick a single pixel, or drag to select a region and pick its averaged color
• Esc or right-click cancels the picker
• Copy as HEX, RGB, HSL, HSV, Oklch, Oklab, Okhsl, P3, or CMYK
• Keyboard shortcuts 1–9 copy the respective format
• Input any supported format, or a CSS color name to set the color
• The main window is the current color, with contrast-adjusted controls
• Gradient Hue/Saturation/Lightness sliders
• APCA contrast scores of the current colour on white and black
• History of the last 8 picks — click one to reuse it, hover and click × to remove it, or clear the list
• + button beside the input adds the current colour to history
• Color-harmony swatches (complementary, split complementary, analogous, triadic, tetradic, rectangle) — click a swatch to use it
• Launch-mode, default-format and precision (Practical/Precise) selectors, saved to the config file
• About panel with the logo, version, log level, and the config, history, log and binary paths
• Screen capture on KDE Plasma (ScreenShot2), other Wayland compositors (ext-image-copy-capture) and X11, falling back to the XDG desktop portal

Install

Download latest release - .deb, .rpm, or .AppImage as needed.

• Arch Linux (AUR): yay -S colorpickle (or paru)
• Debian/Ubuntu (.deb): sudo apt install ./colorpickle_*.deb
• Fedora/RHEL/openSUSE (.rpm): sudo dnf install ./colorpickle-*.rpm
• AppImage (any distro): chmod +x ColorPickle-*.AppImage

Note

On KDE Plasma, running the app from AppImage prevents use of the fast ScreenShot2. It therefore falls back to a slower method, such as XDG desktop portal.

Install from source

Clone this repository:

just install   # release build, then install to /usr (prompts for sudo)

just is required for this, plus the native build dependencies listed under Build; the recipes are thin wrappers over cargo.

Configuration

Settings live in ~/.config/colorpickle/config.toml (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/colorpickle/config.toml). The app writes it whenever you change a setting; edit it with the app closed.

launch_mode = "ui_first"     # ui_first | picker_first
default_format = "hex"       # hex | rgb | hsl | hsv | oklch | oklab | okhsl | p3 | cmyk
precision = "practical"      # practical | precise
log_level = "info"           # error | warn | info | debug | trace

• --launch-mode ui_first|picker_first overrides launch_mode for one run
• --log-level overrides log_level for one run (see Logs)
• Pick history is kept apart in ~/.local/state/colorpickle/state.toml (or $XDG_STATE_HOME/colorpickle/state.toml), so picking never rewrites your settings

Development

cargo install cargo-edit cocogitto cargo-outdated   # `cargo set-version`, `cog`, `cargo outdated`
lefthook install                                    # install the git hooks; lefthook must be on PATH

Logs

Logs are written to ~/.local/state/colorpickle/log/ (or $XDG_STATE_HOME/colorpickle/log/), one file per day named colorpickle.log.<date>; the 7 most recent are kept.

• --log-level error|warn|info|debug|trace sets the verbosity; the default is info
• log_level in config.toml does the same, and is overridden by the flag; the About panel has a log level dropdown that applies the change at once and saves it
• RUST_LOG overrides both, e.g. RUST_LOG=colorpickle=debug,wgpu=warn
• The same lines are mirrored to stderr, with colour when stderr is a terminal

Build

Rust 1.99 or newer; rust-toolchain.toml pins that version for rustup users.

Native build dependencies: pkg-config, Wayland and libxkbcommon development headers.

• Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt install pkg-config libwayland-dev libxkbcommon-dev
• Arch: sudo pacman -S --needed pkgconf wayland libxkbcommon

just build                               # release build
just check                               # clippy (deny warnings), formatting check, then tests
just lint                                # clippy only
just --list                              # all recipes
cargo build                              # debug build
cargo fetch && cargo outdated -w         # check for updates above semver range
cargo fmt --check                        # formatting check
cargo fmt                                # format all files
cargo run                                # build and run
cargo upgrade && cargo update --verbose  # update Cargo.lock and dependencies to latest with semver ranges

cargo clean                              # clean build artifacts

Packaging

cargo install cargo-deb cargo-generate-rpm   # once
just package                                 # .deb, .rpm and AppImage into target/

Building the AppImage also needs linuxdeploy on PATH, or its path in LINUXDEPLOY.

License

GNU General Public License v3