On a Mac, open Digital Color Meter (in Applications → Utilities), hover over the color, and press ⌘⇧C to copy its value as text; apps that use the system Colors window, like TextEdit, Pages and Keynote, also have an eyedropper there that samples anywhere on screen. On Windows, install Microsoft PowerToys and press Win+Shift+C to start Color Picker, then click the color: it’s copied to the clipboard as a hex code by default. In hypershot, the color selector in the editor has an eyedropper too (press I), which samples any pixel on your screen and uses it for your annotations or copies its hex.

The built-in way

Mac: Digital Color Meter

  1. Open Digital Color Meter from Applications → Utilities, or type its name into Spotlight.
  2. Move the pointer over the color. The window shows a magnified view and the values of the pixels under the aperture.
  3. Choose a color space from the pop-up menu. For a color you’ll use on the web, pick sRGB; “native” values are your display’s own and won’t match on someone else’s screen.
  4. To get a hex code, choose View → Display Values and switch to hexadecimal.
  5. Press ⌘⇧C (Color → Copy Color as Text) to copy the value. ⌥⌘C copies it as an image swatch.

Hard to hold the pointer steady on a one-pixel line? ⌘L locks the aperture in place so you can move the mouse to the menu without losing the pixel. ⌘X and ⌘Y lock only the horizontal or vertical axis.

Mac: the Colors window eyedropper

Any app that opens the standard macOS Colors window (TextEdit’s Format → Font → Show Colors, for example) has an eyedropper button in it. Click it, then click anywhere on any screen. The sampled color becomes the window’s current color, and the Color Sliders tab set to RGB shows its hex value, ready to copy.

Windows: PowerToys Color Picker

Windows doesn’t ship a system-wide color picker, but Microsoft’s free PowerToys does.

  1. Install PowerToys and make sure Color Picker is turned on in its settings.
  2. Press Win+Shift+C. A small readout follows your cursor; scroll up to zoom in on the pixels.
  3. Left-click to pick: the color is copied to the clipboard (HEX by default, configurable), saved to the history, and the editor opens. Middle-click picks and closes. Right-click cancels.

The editor keeps your last 20 colors and shows each in the formats you’ve turned on: HEX, RGB, HSL and many more, including custom ones. Two limits worth knowing: it doesn’t support HDR or wide-gamut values, and its shortcut won’t work over an app running as administrator unless PowerToys is too.

On Copilot+ PCs, recent versions of Snipping Tool also include a color picker.

The catch with all of these

They’re good at what they do: a hex code on the clipboard. What they don’t do is the next step, which is usually “now use this color for something”, like an arrow in a screenshot that matches the brand, or the highlight that matches the UI it’s pointing at.

With hypershot

hypershot’s eyedropper lives in the editor’s color selector, and that’s the precise way to put it: you open it from the editor, but it samples the live screen, anywhere, including other apps and other displays, not only the capture you’re editing (eyedropper).

  1. Open any capture in the editor and pick an annotation tool, for example the Arrow (A).
  2. Click the color swatch in the tool options bar to open the color selector.
  3. Press I. A small panel follows the cursor with a zoomed 7×7 grid of the pixels under it and the center pixel’s hex value.
  4. Click to take the color. It becomes the tool’s color right away, and the change can be undone. Escape cancels without picking.

When you click, hypershot reads a small area around the cursor rather than a single pixel, so sampling the edge of a letter or an icon gets the color you see, not a half-blended anti-aliasing pixel.

From there:

  • Copy the hex. The color selector copies the current color’s hex value to the clipboard, for CSS, Figma or anywhere else (color selector).
  • Keep it. Save up to 6 favorites, and they persist across sessions. Your last 6 colors are in the history too.
  • Per tool. Each tool remembers its last color, so your arrows can stay brand blue while your highlights stay yellow.

If the color you want is in something that won’t sit still, like a hover state, a video or an animation, capture it first, then sample it from the capture in the editor.

Which to use

  • “I need this hex code for CSS.” Digital Color Meter on Mac, PowerToys Color Picker on Windows. Both are free and quick.
  • “I need many formats and a history.” PowerToys’ editor is hard to beat.
  • “I’m annotating a screenshot and want it to match.” hypershot’s eyedropper, because the color goes straight onto the arrow, box or text you’re drawing. How to annotate a screenshot covers the tools it feeds.