A couple of days ago, Microsoft revealed a redesigned PowerToys Run launcher with Windows 11-like aesthetics and new features. As it turned out, Run is not the only tool to get a fresh coat of paint. Microsoft published an early preview of the upcoming PowerToys Color Picker rework.
PowerToys Color Picker is a neat utility that, as the name implies, lets you get color codes in different formats, such as HEX, RGB, HSL, HSV, and plenty of others. In addition, PowerToys generates a palette containing similar to the select color tones. You can invoke PowerToys" Color Picker by pressing Win + Shift + C (almost all PowerToys shortcuts are customizable) and get color from any pixel on the screen.
After the Color Picker is activated, hover your mouse cursor over the color you would like to copy and left-click the mouse button to select a color. If you want to see the area under your cursor in more detail, scroll up to zoom in.
The copied color will be stored in your clipboard in the format that is configured in the settings (default: HEX).
The editor lets you see the history of (up to 20) picked colors and copy their representation in any predefined string format. In PowerToys Settings, you can configure which color formats are visible in the editor and in what order that they appear.
A pull request published on PowerToys" GitHub repository describes the proposed change:
This PR moves ColorPicker off ModernWpf to WpfUI and introducing a fresh new UX, inline with the Windows 11 design language.
You can see how the current UI compares with what is to come:
And here is the new version in action:
PowerToys is an open-source set of utilities for Windows 10 and 11, which means every user with the necessary skills can contribute to the project"s development on GitHub. As for regular customers with no dev knowledge, they can get PowerToys from its GitHub repository, the Microsoft Store, or winget.