Color Picker

Color Picker is a tiny software utility created in the Java programming language, whose purpose is to provide a straightforward means of identifying the hexadecimal and RGB channels of any color currently displayed on the screen. It automatically copies the hex code so that you can quickly paste it into various graphic editing or web design projects you're working at.

When it comes to the interface, the utility has a single, small panel that stays on top of other opened windows to reveal the color codes regardless of the environment you're accessing. Although the stay-on-top option cannot be disabled, it's possible to minimize the panel to the taskbar to make the program temporarily non-intrusive without having to exit.

There's a small box inside the panel that captures the color currently shown at the mouse pointer. Meanwhile, the hexadecimal, red, green and blue codes are calculated and displayed in real time, while the hex code is auto-copied to the Clipboard.

The disadvantage of the auto-copy mode is that Color Picker overrides any attempts to copy anything else, whether it's a text, image, file, or any other kind of record. This issue is resolved by quitting the application.

Provided that you have Java Runtime Environment installed on your machine, you don't have to set up additional components. Color Picker is packed into a single .exe file that can be dropped anywhere on the disk or copied to the removable storage unit to launch it on any PC with as little effort as possible. It doesn't make updates to the system registry or create folders or files on the disk. It's only necessary to delete the executable to perform an uninstall.

Unsurprisingly, the feather-light tool left a small footprint on system resources in our evaluation, using low CPU and RAM. Although it doesn't feature richer options, such as a manager for capturing multiple color codes, Color Picker is fast and easy to use by those interested in grabbing colors from any part of the desktop.