How many times have you opened Photoshop, Illustrator, or even a browser just to pick a colour from your screen? We were doing it dozens of times a day.
So we built something better.
The Problem
Modern design tools are powerful, but they’re also bloated. Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator takes 30+ seconds to launch on most machines. That’s 30 seconds of waiting just to grab a hex value. More energy consumed, more carbon footprint.
Browser-based colour pickers exist, but they come with their own baggage:
- Opening yet another browser tab
- Finding the right bookmark
- Navigating to sites like color-hex.com, colorhexa.com, or color.co
- Dealing with popup blockers and permissions
- Another HTTP request, another server spinning up, more bandwidth consumed
As an agency owner committed to sustainable web design principles, I found myself constantly questioning this workflow. Every visit to a colour picker website meant more data transfer, more server resources, more energy consumption. For something as simple as grabbing a hex value, we were contributing to the internet’s carbon footprint dozens of times daily.
There had to be a better way.
Our Solution: A Native Tauri App
We built a lightweight desktop colour picker as a web applet using Tauri and here’s why that choice matters.
Why Tauri Instead of Electron?
Most desktop JavaScript apps today use Electron, but Electron apps are notorious for their bloat. A simple “Hello World” Electron app can easily exceed 150MB and consume 100MB+ of RAM. That’s because Electron bundles an entire Chromium browser with every application.
Tauri takes a fundamentally different approach:
- Uses your system’s native webview instead of bundling Chromium
- Rust backend for blazing-fast performance
- Tiny bundle sizes - our colour picker is under 15MB
- Minimal RAM usage - typically under 15MB
- Native system integration without the overhead
The result? A native app that:
- Launches in under 1 second
- Lives in your taskbar/dock
- Does one thing brilliantly: picks colours from anywhere on your screen
- Copies hex, RGB, or HSL values instantly
- Respects your system resources
Command+Tab (or Alt+Tab on Windows) and you’re picking colours. No friction. No waiting. No unnecessary internet requests.
Built for Efficiency
We optimised ruthlessly:
- Native Rust backend for performance
- <15MB download size (compared to 150MB+ for Electron alternatives)
- Instant startup
- Keyboard-first interface
- Zero network requests after installation
Every design decision was made with efficiency in mind. This isn’t just about developer convenience—it’s about building tools that respect both your time and your computer’s resources.
The Sustainability Angle
Here’s what really motivated this project: realising how many unnecessary server calls I was making daily just to pick colours. Every visit to an online colour picker means:
- DNS lookups
- SSL handshakes
- Server processing
- Data transfer both ways
- Ad trackers and analytics (on most sites)
- Cookie storage and privacy implications
Multiply that by dozens of times per day, across thousands of designers and developers worldwide, and you’re looking at significant cumulative impact.
Our local colour picker eliminates all of that. It’s part of our broader commitment to reducing digital waste—building tools that do their job efficiently without unnecessary network overhead.
Open Source & Accessible
We believe tools like this should be available to everyone, which is why we’ve open-sourced the entire project.
Download Options
- Mac users: We offer a universal DMG that works on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs - Download for Mac
- Windows & Linux users: While we don’t have pre-compiled versions (I don’t have access to Windows or Linux machines to compile and test properly), you can easily build it yourself from source
Build It Yourself
We encourage you to check out the source code and build it yourself:
- GitHub Repository
- Clear build instructions for Windows, Linux, and Mac
- Customize it to your needs
- Learn how Tauri apps work
Building it yourself takes just a few minutes if you have Rust and Node.js installed. The GitHub repository includes step-by-step instructions for all platforms.
Technical Details for the Curious
For those interested in the technical implementation:
- Frontend: Simple HTML/CSS/JavaScript for the UI
- Backend: Rust for system integration and colour detection
- Framework: Tauri for the bridge between web and native
- Size: Final bundle under 10MB
- Performance: Startup time under 1 second on most systems
- Memory: Typically uses 10-15MB RAM (vs 100MB+ for Electron alternatives)
A Tool That Respects Your Workflow
This colour picker represents our philosophy at Tsuga Digital: build tools that do one thing exceptionally well, respect system resources, and eliminate unnecessary complexity.
No bloat. No tracking. No internet connection required. Just a simple, fast tool that gets out of your way and lets you work.
It’s the tool we wished existed, so we built it. And now it’s yours too.
Try It Out
Whether you download our pre-built Mac version or compile it yourself for Windows or Linux, we think you’ll appreciate the simplicity and speed. It’s a small tool, but it’s made our daily workflow noticeably smoother.
And every time we use it instead of opening a browser tab, we’re making a tiny contribution to a more sustainable web—one colour pick at a time.
Download for Mac | View Source on GitHub | Read our sustainable design principles