Copying and exporting
Copying one colour
Click the colour and it goes to the clipboard in the format the window is set to. No menu, no dialogue, and the footer flashes Copied … with what it took. The same click works on a row in the List, a tile in Tiles, a band in a harmony, a tile in the compact strip, a colour card’s swatch, a preview colour in the Library, and a recent colour in the menu bar panel.
A copied colour lands on the clipboard twice over: as text in your chosen format, and as a colour object. Paste into a text editor and you get the code. Paste into a colour well or a design tool and you get the colour. Nothing asks which you meant.
The colour card
Tear Off into a Window takes one colour out into a floating card of its own. It holds the colour, its name, and every value at once (HEX, RGB, HSL, LAB, OKLCH and CMYK) with the same click-to-copy on the colour itself and an export button for the rest.
It folds, too: the control in its corner collapses the card to a tile holding just the colour, its name and its hex. Kept on top of your work, that’s a colour you can refer to while you do something else without a window in the way.
Choosing the format
The FORMAT menu sits in the palette window’s header. It belongs to that window and is remembered, so two windows can be set differently. It only ever changes what is copied, never what is drawn.
The menu shows your favourites, grouped Web, Apple and Other, with the current format always present even when it isn’t a favourite. Each group ends in Show all N… for the rest, arranged by family.
Favourites live in Settings → Code. Eight are set to begin with (CSS HEX, CSS RGB, CSS RGBA, CSS HSL, CSS HSLA, NSColor sRGB, UIColor RGB and the Swift NSColor sRGB form) and Reset puts them back. Edit Favourites… at the foot of the menu goes straight there.
Thirty-six formats in all:
| Group | Formats |
|---|---|
| Web | CSS HEX, CSS RGB, CSS RGBA, CSS HSL, CSS HSLA |
| Apple, Objective-C | NSColor (calibrated RGB/HSB, device RGB/HSB/CMYK, RGB/HSB/sRGB), UIColor (RGB/HSB), CGColor (RGB/CMYK) |
| Apple, Swift | The same NSColor and UIColor forms in Swift syntax |
| Other | Android ARGB, RGB and XML resource; Java RGB, RGBA; .NET RGB, ARGB; OpenGL RGB, RGBA |
Copying in a format you have not chosen
Right-click any colour for Copy in the current format, Copy HEX Value, and Copy As…: all thirty-six, by platform and family. None of it changes what the window is set to.
How a value is written
Settings → Code decides the details: whitespace removed or kept, fractions rather than 0–255 where a
format allows it, decimal places, ALL CAPS hex, and whether a # is prefixed. A preview of three
formats shows what each choice does to your first colour, so you’re not guessing.
Exporting a palette
The export button sits at the bottom right of the palette window (the Palette menu has the same thing) and groups what it writes. Each one opens a Save panel:
| Group | Formats |
|---|---|
| Code and data | JSON, XML, HTML, Markdown, SVG, CSS, SCSS, Sass, Less |
| Palettes to share | Adobe Swatch Exchange, Apple Colour List, GIMP Palette |
| Image | PNG |
Dragging the palette out of the window’s footer does the same thing without the menu, using the last format you exported.
Names in code exports are made safe as identifiers, and numbered when they repeat.