Colorblind Helper app icon

Colorblind Helper

Name any colour on your screen.

A free color picker overlay for color blind people and artists. Point at anything to see its name, a plain-language description, HEX and RGB values, and how it looks with protanopia, deuteranopia and tritanopia.

⬇ Windows ⬇ macOS ★ Star on GitHub

Free & open source (MIT) · No account · No tracking · Works offline

The Starry Night · Vincent van Gogh, 1889

What it does

A color identifier that follows your cursor

Around 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women have a color vision deficiency. Colorblind Helper sits in your tray and labels colors anywhere: web pages, photos, charts, games, design tools and paintings.

Color names, instantly

Closest named color (CIEDE2000), HEX and RGB values beside the cursor.

Descriptive mode

Plain words like “light muted teal”, plus HSL, HSV, CMYK and WCAG contrast.

Through other eyes

Protanopia, deuteranopia, tritanopia and achromatopsia simulations.

An artist’s palette

Copied colors become paint dabs. Reuse them, or export to GIMP, Krita or Inkscape.

Live in a painting

Themes from Starry Night, Sunflowers, Irises, Almond Blossom and more.

Out of your way

Click-through overlay, global hotkeys, starts at login if you want, about 1% CPU.

Self-Portrait, 1887 · Art Institute of Chicago

Vincent, through other eyes

A red beard against a green ground makes a natural red–green test. Here it is as each kind of colour vision might see it, simulated with the same model the app uses (Machado et al., 2009).

Van Gogh self-portrait with typical color vision
Typicaloriginal colours
Van Gogh self-portrait simulated with protanopia (red-blind)
Protanopiared-blind
Van Gogh self-portrait simulated with deuteranopia (green-blind)
Deuteranopiagreen-blind · most common
Van Gogh self-portrait simulated with tritanopia (blue-blind)
Tritanopiablue-blind
Van Gogh self-portrait simulated with achromatopsia (no color)
Achromatopsialight & shade only

Get started

Three steps

  1. Download for Windows or macOS and run it. There’s nothing to install.
  2. Point at any color. The overlay shows its name, HEX and RGB.
  3. Ctrl+Shift+D for descriptive mode · Ctrl+Shift+C to copy into your palette.

Questions

FAQ

How can a color blind person tell what color something is on screen?

Run Colorblind Helper and move your mouse over anything. A small overlay next to the cursor shows the color’s name (for example “Crimson”), a plain-language description such as “Vivid red”, and its HEX and RGB values.

Is it free?

Yes. It’s free and open source under the MIT license.

Which types of color blindness does it simulate?

Protanopia (red-blind), deuteranopia (green-blind), tritanopia (blue-blind) and achromatopsia (no color). You can switch any combination on or off.

Can color blind artists use it while painting digitally?

Yes. The overlay works over any app, including Photoshop, Krita, Clip Studio and your browser. Copied colors land in a palette you can export as a .gpl file.

Does it work on macOS?

Yes. Open the app, then allow Screen Recording in System Settings → Privacy & Security so it can read the color under the cursor.

Does it collect any data?

No. It runs entirely on your computer, needs no account and makes no network requests.

“Colour expresses something in itself.”— Vincent van Gogh, letter to Theo, 1885