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1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteChrome’s built-in Color Picker is part of DevTools. To open it, inspect an element, find a color declaration in the Styles pane, and click the small colored square beside the value. From there you can edit the color, change its CSS format, copy it, sample a color with the eyedropper, and—when editing text color—inspect contrast guidance.
Open the Color Picker
- Open Chrome DevTools. You can right-click the page and choose Inspect, or use Chrome’s DevTools keyboard shortcut for your operating system.
- In Elements, select the page element whose styling you want to inspect. If the element is difficult to select, use the element-selection control in DevTools and click it on the page.
- In the Styles pane, find a declaration with a color value, such as
color,background-color, orborder-color. - Click the small color preview square beside the value. The Color Picker opens next to the declaration.
If you want the final value after CSS inheritance and the cascade have been applied, inspect the selected element’s Computed pane. The picker opens from a color declaration in Styles; use Computed to check which value is actually in effect.
Change, copy, or reformat a color
The picker combines a color field and hue controls with an editable display-value field, opacity control, copy-to-clipboard control, eyedropper, and palette selector. The color field lets you adjust the shade; the hue and opacity controls let you change the color family and transparency. You can also edit the displayed value directly, then copy the resulting color for use elsewhere.
Choose a CSS color representation
Chrome can display a color as hex, RGB, HSL, HWB, LCH, OKLCH, LAB, OKLAB, or a color expressed with the CSS color() function. Use the display-value switcher in the picker to select the representation you want. Chrome converts the value when you switch formats, so the visible syntax may change even when the intent is to represent the same color.
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| Format family | Useful when | What to keep in mind |
|---|---|---|
| Hex, RGB, HSL, HWB | You need a familiar CSS value or are working in an established stylesheet that uses one of these formats. | These formats are commonly encountered in CSS; selecting one changes how DevTools displays the value. |
| LCH, OKLCH, LAB, OKLAB | You want to work in a perceptual color space rather than edit only red, green, and blue channels. | A value may not fit in the gamut of a different format when converted. |
CSS color() |
You need a value expressed in a CSS color space supported by the page. | Check the converted value and any gamut warning when changing representations. |
To open the format menu without first opening the full picker, hold Shift while clicking the color preview in Styles. This is the current documented route; older advice to use Appearance > Color format or related command-menu shortcuts is out of date because those controls were deprecated.
Copy a value
Use the picker’s copy control after choosing the representation you want. This is useful when moving the value into another declaration, a design token, or a separate editor. Before pasting, check whether the copied value includes transparency and whether the destination expects the same color syntax.
Choose from palettes
The palette switcher can show Material Design colors, custom colors, CSS Variables, and page colors found in the page’s stylesheets. These choices help when you want to reuse a color already associated with the page rather than create a new value. A listed stylesheet color is a palette option; it is not necessarily the computed color of the currently selected element.
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Sample a color with the eyedropper
- Open the Color Picker from a color swatch.
- Click the eyedropper control, or press C while the picker is open.
- Move the pointer to the color you want to sample. You can pick from the page or elsewhere on the screen.
- Click the target color to apply it to the declaration.
- Press Escape to deactivate the eyedropper without continuing to sample.
Important for wide-gamut and high-definition colors: the eyedropper samples only in sRGB. If the source color lies outside sRGB, Chrome clips it to the closest value in that space. The sampled result therefore may not preserve the source’s full color range. The eyedropper is useful for picking a visible screen color, but it is not a way to recover an out-of-sRGB source color exactly.
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Some color spaces can represent colors that another format cannot. When you switch the display format and a high-definition color would be clipped by the conversion, DevTools shows a warning. The converted value may no longer represent the original color fully. Hover over the warning to reveal the original value, then decide whether to keep the converted result or return to a representation that preserves the color you need.
This is different from sampling with the eyedropper: conversion warnings concern a value being changed between color representations, while the eyedropper’s sRGB limitation concerns colors sampled from the screen. If color fidelity matters, pay attention to both the warning and the source of the value.
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Use contrast guidance for text colors
When the declaration is a text color value, the picker can expose a contrast-ratio section comparing that text color with its corresponding background-color. This panel is tied to text color and its corresponding background; do not expect it on every color declaration, such as a border color.
The documentation says DevTools suggests APCA-compliant values by default. If you want WebAIM suggestions instead, open Settings > Preferences > Elements and clear the APCA preference checkbox. This changes the suggested values in the contrast guidance; it does not change the page’s CSS automatically. You still need to choose or apply the color you want.
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Common problems and fixes
No color square appears beside the declaration
Confirm that you are looking at a color-valued declaration in the Styles pane, not a non-color property or an unrelated value. Select the element in Elements, then expand or locate the rule that contains the relevant color or *-color declaration.
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The color in Styles is not the color on screen
Inspect the element’s Computed pane to see the value after CSS rules, inheritance, and overrides have been resolved. Check whether another rule, a pseudo-class, or an inherited declaration is affecting the visible result before editing the declaration you first noticed.
The sampled color differs from the source
The eyedropper works in sRGB. A source outside that gamut is clipped to the closest sRGB value, so the result cannot retain the source’s full range. If the value being edited is itself a high-definition color, also check whether a format conversion warning is present.
The color changes after switching formats
DevTools converts the value into the selected representation. If the target representation cannot express the original color, the conversion may clip its gamut and show a warning. Hover over the warning to inspect the original value before accepting the converted one.
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The contrast panel is missing
Check that you opened the picker from a text color declaration. The contrast section compares that text color with its corresponding background-color; it is not a universal panel for every CSS color property.
An older tutorial shows a different menu
Chrome’s Color Picker documentation cautions that its embedded video shows a pre-Chrome-112 DevTools interface. Chrome’s authoring-colors guidance also says the old Appearance > Color format setting and related command-menu shortcuts were deprecated. Use the picker’s display-value switcher or Shift-click the swatch instead.
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Use DevTools when you are already inspecting a page and need to adjust a CSS declaration, copy a value, reuse a stylesheet color, sample a visible screen color, or examine text contrast. It keeps the edit connected to the selected element and its styles. For a final visual check, inspect the updated page after applying the change, and verify the computed value when other CSS rules could override it.
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