Tintpick — Menu Bar Colour Picker for Mac

Tintpick is a colour picker that lives in the Mac menu bar. Press a shortcut, click any pixel on screen, and the colour is already on the clipboard in the format you use most. Picks are remembered, colours can be gathered into palettes, and any two colours can be checked for readable contrast. Everything stays on the Mac.

Any pixel, any app

Control-Option-C starts a pick from wherever you are. A loupe magnifies the pixels under the pointer and shows the value, and one click copies it. Tintpick uses the sampler built into macOS and never takes a screenshot.

Copied the way the code wants it

Nine formats sit on the Colour tab: HEX, RGB, HSL, HSB, SwiftUI, NSColor, UIColor, CSS rgb() and CSS hsl(). Choose one as the default and every pick arrives in it; click any other row to copy that instead.

The last 30, one click away

Every pick is kept, newest first. Click a swatch to copy it again, or right-click it to add it to a palette, use it in the contrast checker, or remove it.

A palette for every project

Name a palette, press Add Current to collect colours as you pick them, and export it as JSON, CSS variables or plain text when the set is ready.

Readable, or not

Put a text colour and a background into the Contrast tab and the WCAG ratio appears, with AA and AAA verdicts for normal and large text.

How it works

• Press Control-Option-C in any app, or click the menu bar icon and press Pick. A magnifying loupe follows the pointer with the colour value underneath.
• Click to pick and the colour is on the clipboard in the default format, with a confirmation such as Copied #3A7BD5. Escape cancels without copying.
• Click any format row on the Colour tab to copy HEX, RGB, HSL, HSB, SwiftUI, NSColor, UIColor, CSS rgb() or CSS hsl() instead.
• History keeps the last 30 picks. Click a swatch to copy it again, or right-click it to add it to a palette or send it to the contrast checker.
• The ellipsis menu holds Default Format, Uppercase HEX, Global Hotkey and Open at Login.

Opening it the first time

Tintpick is signed and notarized by Apple, so it opens with a normal double-click. Picking uses the colour sampler built into macOS, so there is no Screen Recording or Accessibility permission to grant.

Does it need Screen Recording permission?

No. Picking goes through the colour sampler that macOS provides, which returns only the colour under the pointer. There is no Screen Recording or Accessibility permission to grant, and no screenshot is ever taken.

Why does a picked colour differ slightly from the design file?

The sampler reads what the display shows and converts it to sRGB. Colours from wide-gamut images or colour-managed apps can shift by a step or two, so for exact brand values the design file remains the source.

Where are history and palettes kept?

In one small file at ~/Library/Application Support/Tintpick/library.json. There is no account, nothing is uploaded, and the app never connects to the internet.

What if Control-Option-C does nothing?

Another app already owns that combination, and the ellipsis menu says so next to Global Hotkey. The Pick button in the panel and Pick Colour on the menu bar icon still work.

Which Macs does it run on?

Any Mac with Apple silicon or Intel running macOS 13 Ventura or later.