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I'm looking for a way to easily pick a color from anywhere on the screen in Mac OS X and get the value as a hex code (like #ACC782 ).

OS X has a built in system "color picker" and I found a standalone "app" that will just run that, but I don't see any way to get the hex code from it.

Firefox and Chrome both have "color picker" extensions but I'm looking for something that I can use on any application.

What can I use for that? It would be really nice if it automatically copied the value to the clipboard, but that may be asking too much :)

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You do realize that you didn't need to register a second account to answer your questions, but can simply answer them with your own account (like e.g. I do)? – Daniel Beck Dec 30 '11 at 8:26
I asked a moderator about it; if you want, they could merge your accounts. There is no rule against answering your own questions. (Assuming you are haxie) – Daniel Beck Dec 30 '11 at 8:55
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3 Answers

up vote 1 down vote accepted

The Mac OS X color picker is extensible.

Use Hex Color Picker to add a tab that provides you the configured color in hexadecimal RGB.

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Just run e.g. TextEdit and press Cmd-Shift-C to open the color picker, or run your standalone program.

An even more versatile color picker is Developer Color Picker with another few output formats. Hexadecimal is called HTML.

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up vote 2 down vote

This is easily done with AppleScript. A complete working example of code is available here.

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up vote 0 down vote

OS X comes with DigitalColor Meter:

Applications > Utilities > DigitalColor Meter.app

It has many options and preferences.

command+shift+c will copy the color under the cursor to the clipboard in many different formats.

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