ColorSniffer

Although it’s easy for you to tell colors by simply looking and naming, a computer doesn’t detect and recognize colors in the same way. Based on different sets of code, depending on the target program, color codes on the screen can easily be detected with the help of applications like ColorSniffer.

A neat advantage is that you don’t have to go through a setup process for the application to properly work. This means you can keep it on an USB flash drive to use on other computers as well. Another perk of portability is that system registries are not a dependency, thus remain intact before and after usage.

Upon launch, a compact main window shows up, putting all of its features in plain sight. Needless to say you get to see the target color in a preview area, with a few other fields that provide several code types to help you out in different projects.

If you’re moving the cursor around the desktop and nothing happens, it’s only because this needs to be done while dragging the dropper from the main window. When doing so, the preview area and text fields provide feedback in real time, locking on to the selected color when you release the dropper.

Unfortunately, there’s no palette to store more colors, or at least obtain close tones to the one you select. What’s more, pressing OK closes ColorSniffer, even if done accidentally, so you might want to pay extra attention to keyboard activity, especially since the main window stays on top of everything else.

Color codes are shown in three types, such as RGB, HEX, and HTML. As mentioned above, these are generated in real time, with the possibility to have them copied when done. Sadly, there’s no option to export a list of generated colors, or even send all codes to clipboard.

Taking everything into consideration, we can say that ColorSniffer comes in handy for quickly finding out what code that specific part of your screen displays. Although the set of features leaves more to be desired, it’s pretty straightforward and easy to use in order to make color selection task fast and effortless.