How to pick a color from anywhere on your screen on Windows
Short answer
Windows has no built-in screen eyedropper. Microsoft's free PowerToys adds one: press Win+Shift+C, click any pixel and copy its HEX or RGB value. If you also want to keep colours in named palettes and check contrast, AppRig's Colors tool picks any on-screen colour, saves it to palettes, generates a shade ramp and runs a WCAG contrast check.
The manual way
Windows itself has no system-wide eyedropper. Paint’s colour picker only works inside the Paint canvas, so the built-in route is to take a screenshot (Win+Shift+S), paste it into Paint, pick the pixel and read its values from Edit colours. It works, but it is several steps for one colour.
The common free fix is Microsoft PowerToys, whose Color Picker module opens with Win+Shift+C, picks from any window and copies the value in formats such as HEX and RGB. Design apps also have their own eyedroppers, but only inside the app. None of these organises colours into palettes or tells you whether two colours have enough contrast to be readable together.
The faster way with AppRig
AppRig’s Colors tool has a Pick button that opens a screen-wide eyedropper: click any pixel and the colour lands in a Recent palette, and in your own palette too if one is selected. The free version includes one custom palette alongside the built-in Material, Tailwind and Web Safe sets, and AppRig Pro lets you keep as many named palettes as you like.
Click a swatch to see its HEX, RGB, HSL and HSV values, each copied with one click, plus a generated 50 to 900 shade ramp and its contrast ratio on white and black. A full contrast checker shows the ratio for any foreground and background pair with AA and AAA pass or fail results and a live text preview, so you can confirm text will be legible before you ship it.
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Common questions
Does Windows have a built-in color picker?
Not a system-wide one. Paint has a colour picker tool, but it only reads colours inside the Paint canvas, so you would have to paste a screenshot in first. For picking from any window, the usual free option is the Color Picker in Microsoft PowerToys, opened with Win+Shift+C, which copies the value in a format you choose.
How do I get the hex code of a color on my screen?
Use a screen eyedropper, click the pixel, and copy the hex value it shows. Without one, take a screenshot with Win+Shift+S, paste it into Paint, use Paint's colour picker on the pixel and open Edit colours to read the values. Browsers also have eyedroppers in their developer tools for colours on web pages.
What contrast ratio do I need for readable text?
The WCAG accessibility guidelines ask for at least 4.5 to 1 between normal text and its background for level AA, and 3 to 1 for large text. Level AAA raises that to 7 to 1 and 4.5 to 1. A contrast checker takes the two colours and tells you the ratio and which levels pass.
Why does the picked color not match the color in my design file?
A screen picker reads the colour as it is displayed, after the app, the browser and Windows have applied colour management, HDR, Night light or scaling. Those can shift values slightly. Turn off Night light while picking, and when exact values matter, take the colour from the source file rather than the screen.
Related questions
AppRig does this and more, all in one local-first Windows app. See what AppRig does →