Pika (pronounced pi·kuh, like picker) is an easy to use, open-source, native colour picker for macOS. Pika makes it simple to quickly find colours on screen, in the format you need, so you can get on with being a speedy, successful designer.
Pika is a delightful and elegantly designed color picker. I use it all the time and love the built-in contrast ratio checker. Tons of small details that add up to it being a lovely experience every time I use it.
A nifty utility that is well designed and just works. I’ve used similar tools on macOS before, and Pika is the best combo of practical and reliable I’ve found. It doesn’t seem to struggle with color spaces like some other tools do (i.e., the picked color is usually the color defined in code).
My wishes for the future:
- show some history of picked colors or color pairs (and their contrast);
- APCA contrast calculations would be great, in addition to WCAG2 ones.
In today’s online world it is not optional to ensure that all you do is accessible to all. One big part of accessibility is color choice. I am not color blind but I can’t tell you how often I have been on sites where I can’t read the text due to poor choices of color.
Pika solves for that and is extremely easy to use. Pika allows you to see how your color choices contrast and how appropriate (or not) they are to use to be compliant.
When I am working on anything online, I always have Pika open. Can’t overstate the importance of this or how useful Pika is.
