a ColorSlurp alternative with no pro tier

what ColorSlurp is built for

colour as a workflow rather than a lookup. the free tier picks colours off the screen and converts between notations, and it does that well enough that most people never see the paywall.

what does ColorSlurp pro add

unlimited saved palettes, swatches, colour harmonies, picking from a photo or the camera, and export to a long list of formats — PDF, ASE, CSS, Sass, Swift, CLR, HTML, JSON among them. it runs on Mac, iPhone, iPad and Vision, so a palette started on a laptop is on the phone.

for someone whose day is design work, a tool arranged entirely around colour earns both its place and its subscription.

our side of this is one module, not an app: what it does and does not do is written out on its own page — the colour picker in hop

where ColorSlurp is better than hop

everywhere colour is the work rather than a detail of it. there is no palette in hop: picked colours form a list, and a list is not a palette — you cannot name it, reorder it, hand it to a teammate or drop it into a design file.

there is no export at all. no ASE for Illustrator, no CLR for the system picker, no CSS variables written out for you. if the end of your colour work is a file somebody else opens, hop has nothing at that end.

no harmonies, no contrast checking, no camera, no photo library. and no phone: hop is Mac only, and a colour you took on the Mac stays on the Mac.

we have not put ColorSlurp through a feature-by-feature test and will not describe gaps we have not seen. what is above is our own side named honestly; theirs is best read from their own pages.

if the whole job is one hex value out of something on screen, the shortest route is written up separately — getting a hex code off the screen

the colour picker macOS already ships

is there a free colour picker built into macOS

yes, and any honest page about colour pickers has to say so before it sells anything. Digital Color Meter has been in Applications ▸ Utilities for two decades. it magnifies, reads a value under the cursor, and copies it as text with ⇧⌘C or as an image with ⌥⌘C.

the aperture slider is the part people miss: shrink it to a single pixel, or widen it and every pixel inside is averaged — which is how you read a colour off a gradient or a photograph without picking a stray pixel. Digital Color Meter user guide, Apple Support

on colour spaces it beats both paid pickers and us outright. its View menu on macOS 26.6.2 offers sRGB, Display P3, Adobe RGB, BT.2020 and L*a*b*, plus native display values and two EDR variants. hop offers three notations of one space. on a single careful measurement, the free utility wins.

where it stops is repetition. it shows one space at a time, so a second notation is a trip to the menu; it keeps nothing, so the value you read four minutes ago is gone; and ⇧⌘C copies the reading you are on, not the six before it.

what a ColorSlurp alternative can do differently

does ColorSlurp need screen recording permission

it does, and its documentation explains why plainly: the magnifier grabs a small 32×32 area around the cursor so it can enlarge it and read the colour out of the image — checked on their docs on 10 september 2026. reading pixels is reading the screen, and macOS gates that behind Screen Recording.

that is not a trick. it is the price of a magnifier that shows you what you are about to click. the grant is wider than the job, though. you are not approving «this app may sample one pixel» but «this app may see everything on this display», and it stands until you revoke it.

Digital Color Meter reads the screen too — it just never asks. the shipped app carries Apple's private entitlements com.apple.private.tcc.allow for kTCCServiceScreenCapture and screencapturekit.noprompt, verified with codesign on macOS 26.6.2 here. the permission class is the same one every third-party app has to request. control access to screen recording, Apple Support

why hop is never asked about

hop takes the third route: it calls the system's own colour sampler, which AppKit describes as displaying the sampling interface and returning the selected colour to the app. what comes back is a colour value — not a frame, not a grab, not pixels. there is nothing to gate, so the dialogue never appears. NSColorSampler, Apple Developer Documentation

this permission has a habit of coming back after updates, which is its own story — the screen recording permission that keeps coming back

the same question applies to every permission dialogue a Mac app puts in front of you — why Mac apps ask for accessibility

how hop picks a colour

which colour formats do you get

• press the shortcut, click a pixel — the colour joins a list and is already copied
• every row carries hex, rgb and hsl side by side, and each of the three is a button
• the order never changes under the cursor; list length and visible rows are settings
• works over anything on screen: a site, a photo, another app's window, a paused video
• macOS never asks for screen recording, because the sampler hands back a colour

the eighteen-tools point is not decoration: text recognition works the same way, off the same icon, with the same reading — text recognition in hop

where the colours go afterwards

each pick joins a list in the order you took them, so a shade from twenty minutes ago is still on screen when the conversation comes back around to it. clicking a notation copies it — and copied text is exactly what the clipboard history keeps.

that is the small, unglamorous consequence of eighteen tools sharing one app. the picker and the clipboard are not two programs that had to be taught about each other.

the clipboard side of it holds files as well as text, which is where it parts company with the one in Spotlight — clipboard history in hop

how to try it without deciding anything

1. open Digital Color Meter first — if one reading is the whole job, stop there
2. download hop: about 6 mb, no registration, macOS 14 and later
3. press the shortcut and pick a colour off a website, a photo and another app's window
4. notice that macOS never asks for screen recording permission
5. if you need palettes, exports or harmonies, ColorSlurp Pro is $19.99 a year and built for exactly that

the other comparisons on this site are written the same way, competitor's strengths first — all comparisons

frequently asked questions

is there a colour picker built into macOS?

yes — Digital Color Meter, in Applications ▸ Utilities. it reads sRGB, Display P3, Adobe RGB, BT.2020 and L*a*b*, has an aperture that averages pixels, and copies with ⇧⌘C. for one careful reading it is the best tool of the three on this page.

why does ColorSlurp ask for screen recording?

its magnifier grabs a small area around the cursor to enlarge it and read the colour out of that image. reading pixels is reading the screen, so macOS requires the permission. it is honest engineering, not a trick.

does hop need screen recording permission?

no. it calls the system colour sampler, which returns a colour value rather than the screen, so there is nothing for macOS to gate and the dialogue never appears.

which formats can it copy?

hex, rgb and hsl. every picked colour carries all three and you click the one you want. other colour spaces are not covered — that is what Digital Color Meter is for.

can i save palettes?

no. picked colours form a list in the order you took them, but there are no named palettes, no reordering and no exports. this is the clearest thing ColorSlurp Pro has that hop does not.

is there an iPhone version?

no, hop is Mac only. ColorSlurp runs on iPhone, iPad and Vision as well.

is there a pro tier?

no. free and open source under MIT, with nothing held back and no paid tier planned.

the hop side of this

color picker — any pixel on screen, in hex, rgb and hsl at once.