Color picker/eyedropper should apply color style

When using the color picker, if the object you’re picking from has a color style applied, the color picker doesn’t apply that style to the selected object — it just applies the hex value (or whatever color model you have set) of the pixel you click. This can lead to messy colors not adhering to your style guide.

Instead, the color picker should apply the color style of the clicked object if it has one. (You could click the stroke to apply the stroke’s color style, or the fill to apply the fill’s color style.)

If you do want to be able to pick the pixel color instead of the style, there could be an additional modifier key to hold while clicking.

With the current functionality, if you want to apply the same color style to another object, you first have to click the already-styled object to see what style is applied (assuming you may have multiple similar shades and can’t eyeball it), then click the object you want to style, and then find that color style in the list and apply it. The proposed workflow would be: click the object you want to style, press Ctrl-C, click the already-styled object.

Illustrator works this way — “global” colors (equivalent to color styles) are applied when an object styled with one is clicked with the eyedropper tool.

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I have an object selected, and I want to change its colour to match another object with a fill from the Colour Library. When I use the colour picker, it captures the hex value of the other object. Later, when I edit that colour in the Colour Library, I want all objects using that colour style to update to the new colour. However, objects for which I have used the colour picker to fill are left out of this global style change, and I have to go back and update their fills to the Colour Library colours. If the colour picker picked up on the fact that the object’s fill is a colour in the Colour Library, I could avoid this extra step, and all my objects of the same colour would be linked through the Colour Library.

Does this bug anyone else?
Does anyone have a use-case where they don’t want the colour picker to set the selected object’s colour as the Colour Library colour, and do in fact just want the raw hex?
Anyone know of any plugins that do this?

2 Likes

Can we bump this?

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Agreed, I am really missing Illustrator’s fine-grained color picker tool where I can Alt/Opt + Click to apply the currently selected color to objects under my cursor, by path.

It made applying colors to certain pieces of complex icons and designs a breeze instead of having to go select everything I want first, then apply a single color. Losing a selection is easier (and more frustrating) than having the ability to fly around and apply colors like this.

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It would be a really cool enhancement if the eyedropper tool ‘i’ could also copy text styles (like it does in InDesign). Being able to copy properties is fine, but having to manually select each text layer and copy the properties, to then manually select each text layer and paste those properties is a bit of a pain.

It would be ace if you could eyedropper the text style you want and ‘dropper’ the style onto the text you’d like to update. InDesign does this really well.

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If a color style has been applied to an object it would be helpful if the selection made by the eyedropper tool was that color style, rather than the hex value.

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Guys - switching over from Illlustrator and loving Figma. But it looks like you can’t use the eyedropper tool to copy/paste text styles. This would be a massive timesaver!

I know there’s copy/paste properties. But it doesn’t copy all properties and is a significantly more lengthy shortcut that eyedropper and thus becomes painfully slow.

Please add this feature soon!

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Use eyedropper tool to copy and paste text styles

it’s been a few months - hope this can get implemented! This would really speed up my workflow too

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One small issue I have while working in Figma is that I sometimes want to assign a certain style to my current selection. The only way to do this now is to move with the mouse to the right panel and search/select the style from the menus.
Often times, another element with the needed styling is already somewhere on the canvas, and I would like to be able to copy that style from this element; however the eyedropper tool only picks up hardcoded color values.

My improvement idea is that with an additional modifier key that you can press after entering the eyedropper selection mode, you could enable a “pick up style” mode instead.

This way I could assign styles to objects on the canvas much quicker.
See attached schema for a visual explanation.

In case multiple styles are assigned to the “source” (fill + stroke + effects) I guess the easiest would be to copy all of them over to the target object.

I guess it could also work with text layers, where this mode would pick up both the typography style of the layer and the color.

What do you think? Any big downsides I am missing?

6 Likes

Make a modifier of some sorts that would allow the eyedropper to paste a color style. Ex.: pressing Ctrl with eyedropper selected. Perhaps it could work for Text Styles too with a different modifier.

This would work only for colors, which solves the problem of the only solution I currently know of how to deal with this - copy/pasting properties.

If anybody knows a workaround to this, feel free to share. Thanks

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I agree with this, it will be a massive timesaver

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Just bumping this as I use color picker very often especially when trying to prototype quickly, but I end up with a mess of hex codes that I then have to go back and apply correct color styles to. Picking up color styles would be amazing.

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Bump x2 Really need this! Please and ty

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Bump! I would really love this feature.

taps mic Is this thing on?

No modifier needed. Eyedropper should get the color style. What am I missing here? I can’t imagine this would be a problem?

I know this has been mentioned before but not for a bit. Instead of only being able to collect the HEX value when eyedropping a color, could you eyedrop the style connected to the item? This would change my life :pray:t3:

1 Like

Hi Figma, Any thoughts on this feature? (Perhaps adding the press of ‘alt’ when eye-dropping would pick the style and not the hex?)

Hey All, thanks for the feedback!

We’ve merged a couple of similar, existing topics here together, so we can track overall interest from the community more accurately. We’ll pass this onto the team for future consideration.