Name That Color

Color picker that names what you see: plain-English name, hex, RGB, CMYK, HSL and HSV codes, one-click copy. Picks from images too.

A hex code tells you a color's numbers, but not what the color is. Name That Color gives you the word. Click the toolbar icon, point at anything on a web page, and you get a real name you can say out loud, like "dusty rose" or "dark brown", along with the codes developers and designers expect. It was built first for colorblind users, who are often asked to pick, match or describe colors without any way to check them. It is also useful for web and UI developers, artists, designers, and anyone who has ever wondered what that color on the screen is actually called. WHAT YOU GET FOR EVERY COLOR • A big, readable name. Names come from the xkcd color survey, in which hundreds of thousands of people named colors in their own words. That gives you around 950 names that sound like things a person would actually say, such as "burnt orange", "seafoam" or "muted purple". • The plain-language family. Under the name, you see the simple description the color falls into, such as "pale pink", "vivid red" or "dark brown". This is the answer you would give someone over the phone. • Similar names. A column of nearby names shows what else the color could be called, so you can see how close it is to its neighbors and pick the word that fits. • The usual codes. Hex, RGB, CMYK, HSL and HSV, each one click to copy. CMYK is the standard on-screen approximation, not a press-accurate conversion. • A swatch you can copy. Put the color on your clipboard as a small square image and paste it into anything that accepts pictures. HOW IT WORKS 1. Click the Name That Color icon in your toolbar. Picking mode turns on. 2. Move your cursor over the page. A small card follows it and names whatever is underneath. 3. Click to lock that color into a panel with the full details. 4. Click the icon again to turn picking off. Nothing runs until you click the icon. KEEP SEVERAL COLORS AT ONCE Comparing colors is easier when you can see them side by side. Clone a panel with the copy button to keep it on screen, then pick another. The panel you clicked last is the active one, and it is where new colors land. Each panel has back and forward buttons to step through the colors you have picked in the session, so you can go back to one you passed. Two shortcuts make this faster: • Ctrl-click (Cmd-click on a Mac) drops the color into a brand-new panel. • Alt-click clicks the page itself, so you can follow a link or press a button without leaving picking mode. PICK FROM AN IMAGE FILE Drag an image file onto the page, or paste one from your clipboard, and it opens in a window of its own. Hover to see the name of the pixel under your cursor, and click to send that color to a panel. This works on photos, screenshots, palettes, paintings and anything else you have saved, and it all stays on your device. FOR COLORBLIND USERS If you have a color vision deficiency, you have probably been asked "what color is this?" by a tool that could only answer with numbers. Name That Color answers in words. Point at a button, a chart line, a shirt in a product photo, or a status light in a screenshot, and read the name. Seeing the similar names beside it also helps when two colors look alike to you but have different names. FOR DEVELOPERS AND DESIGNERS Check the color of an element without opening dev tools, copy a value in the format you need, and keep a few panels open to compare. The names are handy for talking about a color with a teammate, a client or a ticket, when "the greenish one" is not precise enough. PRIVATE BY DESIGN • It collects no data. There are no accounts, no analytics and no ads. • It makes no network requests. The color names are built into the extension. • It only uses the "activeTab" permission, which means it can see the page you are on, and only after you click the icon. It cannot see your other tabs or your browsing history. • To read a color, it takes a screenshot of the visible tab, holds it in memory just long enough to read the pixels, and discards it. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere. • It writes to your clipboard only when you click Copy, and it reads the clipboard only when you paste an image into it. GOOD TO KNOW • It picks colors from inside the web page you are viewing. It cannot see your browser toolbar, other tabs or other programs on your computer. • Chrome does not let extensions run on its own internal pages or on the Chrome Web Store, so picking will not start there. • Embedded content from other sites, such as some video players, ads and payment forms, can stop the card from following your cursor while you are over it. • Colors on screen depend on your display, its settings and the lighting around it. The name describes the color the screen is showing, not the true color of a physical object. ALSO ON YOUR PHONE There is a live-camera version of Name That Color for phones at name-that-color.com. Point your camera at something and it names the color in front of you. CREDITS Color names come from the xkcd color survey by Randall Munroe, which is in the public domain. Questions, bugs or ideas? Write to support@name-that-color.com.