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 color 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 color 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 slower XDG desktop portal

Install

Download latest release:

Platform	Format	Install
Arch / CachyOS	.tar.zst	tar --zstd -xf colorpickle-*.tar.zst && sudo ./colorpickle-*/install.sh
Debian / Ubuntu	.deb	sudo apt install ./colorpickle_*.deb
Fedora / RHEL / openSUSE	.rpm	sudo dnf install ./colorpickle-*.rpm
Linux - see NOTE	AppImage	chmod +x ColorPickle-*.AppImage && ./ColorPickle-*.AppImage

Note

On KDE Plasma, the fast ScreenShot2 capture requires the binary at a fixed path in /usr. The .deb, .rpm and tarball installs qualify; the AppImage runs from a temporary mount and falls back to a slower method such as the XDG desktop portal.

Install from source

See requirements. Clone this repository then:

just install   # release build, then install to /usr

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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

Logs

Logs are written to ~/.local/state/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; default 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
• The same lines are mirrored to stderr, with color when stderr is a terminal

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Development

Requirements

Rust 1.99, just, pkg-config, lefthook, Wayland and libxkbcommon development headers; zstd is needed for the tarball.

• Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt install just pkg-config libwayland-dev libxkbcommon-dev zstd
• Arch: sudo pacman -S --needed just pkgconf wayland libxkbcommon zstd
• lefthook install from AUR or release packages

cargo install cargo-edit cocogitto cargo-outdated   # cargo set-version, cargo upgrade, cog, cargo outdated
lefthook install                                    # install the git hooks; lefthook must be on PATH
cargo install cargo-deb cargo-generate-rpm          # deb and rpm generators

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

Build

just build                               # release build
just check                               # clippy linter, formatting check, run 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 --all -- --check               # formatting check
cargo fmt --all                          # format all files
cargo test --workspace                   # tests
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

just package                             # .deb, .rpm, AppImage and tarball into target/
cog bump --auto                          # bump version and push

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License

GNU General Public License v3.0