In August last year, Microsoft updated PowerToys with a system-wide color picker to help users easily pick and extract color codes anywhere on their Windows 10 device. Today, we’re going to go over how you can install PowerToys and use the color picker feature on your Windows 10 machine.
Get System-Wide Color Picker in Windows 10
PowerToys is a powerful tool to customize your Windows 10 PC. If you already have PowerToys installed on your system, feel free to jump to the different sections using the table of contents tool below. Also, check out our in-depth article on PowerToys features that shows you all the features you can access using this great plugin.
Download and install PowerToys
To use the system-wide color picker, you must download and install PowerToys. By doing so, Visit PowerToys’ GitHub page. From the Assets section, click on the latest .exe file to download. After the download is complete, run the setup file To install the application on your computer
When you have completed the installation process, you will be greeted with the main page of the PowerToys application. If you always want to access the color picker, Enable the ‘Run at startup’ toggle.
Enable PowerToys Color Picker
1. Switch to the Color Picker tab from the sidebar of PowerToys. It is the second option from the top and the eighth option from the bottom. On this page, Turn the ‘Enable Color Picker’ toggle to ‘On’.
2. As you can see in the picture below, Activate the color picker using the keyboard shortcut Win + Shift + C. You can also remap this to any other shortcut you prefer. To change the shortcut, Click on the ‘Enable Color Picker’ field and press the new keyboard shortcut combination. I changed the hotkeys to Win+Shift+J for display.
3. You can choose to customize the activation behavior before you start using the tool. The available options are Color picker with editor mode enabled, Editor only, and Color Picker. Color picker with editor mode first opens the color picker interface and then when you select a color it opens the editor, the editor opens the edit mode directly and the color picker mode stays on the color picker screen even after you copy the color.
Use the PowerToys Color Picker
Now that you’ve downloaded and activated the color picker, let’s move on to the exciting app part. To start, press the keyboard shortcut you defined in the application. As soon as you hit the shortcut, a color picker interface appears asking you to choose the color from the screen.
When you choose a color, HEX color code is automatically copied to your clipboard. You can also view HEX, RGB and HSL codes along with your final color selections in editor mode.
PowerToys has also bundled an option that allows users to slightly change the selected color. This will come in handy if you are looking for a lighter/darker shade of a certain color you have just selected from your screen.
Choose Color Everywhere in Windows 10
This was our quick guide to introduce PowerToys’ system-wide color picker in Windows 10. We hope this useful tool will help you choose colors without any hassle. For more such Windows 10 tips, be sure to check out our article on the best Windows 10 tips and tricks.
