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Color formats

The short version: Pick a default format under Settings → Format. Tweak the hash prefix, casing, and decimal precision to your taste. Your pick gets formatted that way every time, until you change it.

Setting your default format

Open Settings → Format → Format. The picker is grouped by platform — Web, NSColor, UIColor, SwiftUI, Objective-C, .NET, Java, Android — so you can find what you need without scrolling through a flat list.

Whatever you choose here is used by:

  • The screen picker (the main pick flow).
  • Clicking a swatch in any palette.
  • Clicking an item in the Recent Colors or Favorites submenus.

The Convert Color window is the exception: it shows every format at once and lets you copy any individual row.

The full list

Twenty-one in total. Every format works for any picked color.

Web

  • HEX — #7A5CF0
  • HEXA — #7A5CF0FF (with alpha)
  • CSS RGB — rgb(122 92 240)
  • CSS RGBA — rgb(122 92 240 / 1)
  • CSS HSL — hsl(250 83% 65%)
  • CSS HSLA — hsl(250 83% 65% / 1)

Apple platforms

  • NSColor RGB — NSColor(calibratedRed: 0.48, green: 0.36, blue: 0.94, alpha: 1.00)
  • NSColor HSB — NSColor(calibratedHue: 0.69, saturation: 0.62, brightness: 0.94, alpha: 1.00)
  • UIColor RGB — UIColor(red: 0.48, green: 0.36, blue: 0.94, alpha: 1.00)
  • UIColor HSB — UIColor(hue: 0.69, saturation: 0.62, brightness: 0.94, alpha: 1.00)
  • SwiftUI Color RGB — Color(red: 0.48, green: 0.36, blue: 0.94, opacity: 1.00)
  • SwiftUI Color HSB — Color(hue: 0.69, saturation: 0.62, brightness: 0.94, opacity: 1.00)
  • Swift Color Literal — #colorLiteral(red: 0.48, green: 0.36, blue: 0.94, alpha: 1.00)

Objective-C

  • Obj-C NSColor — [NSColor colorWithCalibratedRed:0.48 green:0.36 blue:0.94 alpha:1.00]
  • Obj-C UIColor — [UIColor colorWithRed:0.48 green:0.36 blue:0.94 alpha:1.00]

Cross-platform

  • .NET RGB — Color.FromArgb(122, 92, 240)
  • .NET ARGB — Color.FromArgb(255, 122, 92, 240)
  • Java RGB — new Color(122, 92, 240)
  • Java RGBA — new Color(122, 92, 240, 255)
  • Android RGB — Color.rgb(122, 92, 240)
  • Android ARGB — Color.argb(255, 122, 92, 240)

Customizing the output

Three toggles, all under Settings → Format. They only show up when they’re relevant to the format you’ve chosen.

Hash prefix (HEX, HEXA)

Use # prefix for hex codes toggles the leading #. On by default. Turn it off if you’re pasting into a tool that adds it for you and doesn’t like duplicates.

Lowercase (HEX, HEXA)

Use lowercase for copied colors switches between #7A5CF0 and #7a5cf0. Off by default. Pick the one that matches the rest of your codebase. (No, your linter doesn’t care, but you will.)

Decimal precision (float formats)

For SwiftUI, UIColor, NSColor, Swift literal, Obj-C NSColor, and Obj-C UIColor — anything that uses normalized 0–1 floats — you can pick 2, 3, or 4 decimal places:

  • 0.48 at 2 places (default)
  • 0.478 at 3 places
  • 0.4784 at 4 places

Two is fine for most UI work. Bump it up if you’re doing color-critical work and need the extra resolution to round-trip accurately.

Switching format on the fly

You don’t have to commit to one format forever. Settings stays open in a small floating window, so you can change format mid-session and pick again immediately. Or use Convert Color to grab a one-off format without changing your default.

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