Use PowerToys Color Picker to copy a screen colour

Need a colour from a chart, screenshot or app window? Guessing by eye is a poor way to reuse it. PowerToys Color Picker turns a visible screen colour into a value you can paste elsewhere.

This guide is for Windows 10 and PowerToys 0.20.1, the patch release available on 11 August 2020. Microsoft added Color Picker in PowerToys 0.20 on 31 July, then released 0.20.1 on 5 August with stability fixes for the utility. The 0.20 release notes and the 0.20.1 patch notes are the version references for these steps.

Install and enable Color Picker

Download PowerToys 0.20.1 from Microsoft’s official release page and install it. Start PowerToys, open its Settings from the system tray, and select Color Picker. Check that the utility is enabled; keep PowerToys running while you use its shortcut.

If you already installed version 0.20.0, update to 0.20.1 before troubleshooting. The patch notes include a ColorPicker settings fix.

Copy a colour from the screen

1. Open the page, document, game menu or application that contains the colour you want.
2. Press Windows + Shift + C to open Color Picker.
3. Move the picker to the colour and click once. The selected value is copied to the clipboard.
4. Paste it into Notepad to check what you copied, then paste it into the colour field or editor where you need it.

A report filed against version 0.20.0 on 1 August records this click-to-copy workflow. It also describes the cursor pausing for a few seconds after a selection. The published 0.20.1 notes mention a different ColorPicker settings fix, not a specific fix for that pause. If the cursor stalls, wait for it to recover and verify the pasted value before sampling again. The contemporaneous issue report is a useful note about this early build.

Sample the colour you actually want

Choose the middle of a flat area when you can. The edge of text, an icon, a shadow or a gradient can contain blended pixels, so a nearby sample may differ from the main colour.

Treat the result as a sample of what is visible on screen. It does not recover the original design file’s colour token or a web page’s underlying CSS value. If you have access to that source, use it when you need the authored value rather than the displayed pixel.

If the shortcut does nothing, check that PowerToys is running and that Color Picker is enabled in Settings. After clicking, paste into a separate text field before copying something else: a new copy replaces the clipboard value.

Sources available by 11 August 2020

• Microsoft PowerToys v0.20.0 release notes , released 31 July 2020.
• Microsoft PowerToys v0.20.1 release notes , released 5 August 2020.
• Microsoft PowerToys issue #5427 , opened 1 August 2020; reports the v0.20.0 click-to-copy workflow and cursor pause.