Ahoy, matey.

Your screen is a treasure map.

Hex Marks the Spot finds the colors on it. Point at any pixel, click, and its color code is on your clipboard, ready for your stylesheet, your design file or a message.

Download on the Mac App Store

One-time purchase. No subscription, no in-app purchases. Requires macOS 26 or later.

Screenshot of the Hex Marks the Spot window on the Colors page: a large swatch of the blue #2A7F9E with its code shown as #2A7F9E and rgb(42, 127, 158), each with a copy button; below it three ramps of lighter, greyer and darker blues, a row of last picked colors and the scratchpad. — The Colors page, just after a find.

Illustration: a brass magnifying glass on a sea chart; inside the lens the coastline turns into square pixels under a grid, one of them outlined.

Three steps to the treasure

No window to open first, no mode to switch. From anywhere on your Mac:

Call the lookout

Click the eyedropper in the menu bar, or press ⌃⌥9 in any app.
Aim

The magnifier follows your pointer: pixels enlarged under a grid, the code of the middle one shown live. Escape or a right-click calls off the search.
Mark the spot

Click. The code goes to your clipboard in the format you chose, and the color lands at the front of your ship’s log.

Screenshot of the magnifier over a drawing of a cove: a round lens shows the pixels of a boat’s rust-red hull enlarged under a grid, the middle pixel outlined, with its code #BE633F on a pill and a round sample of the color beside it. — The app’s magnifier over a demo picture of a cove. The outlined pixel is the one a click would mark.

Every format you paste

Ten ways to write a color, from a bare hex code to a line of Swift. Two formats sit side by side on the color card, each with its own copy button, so a hex code for the stylesheet and RGB values for the design tool are one click apart. You choose both in Settings.

Know the code already? Type a hex value into the card. Want to nudge it? Click the swatch to edit the color with RGB, HSB or CMYK sliders.

Map green from the app icon, in every format the app copies.
HEX without #	3CB371
HEX with #	#3CB371
RGB values	R: 60 G: 179 B: 113
RGB percentages	R: 23.5% G: 70.2% B: 44.3%
CSS rgb()	rgb(60, 179, 113)
CSS hsl()	hsl(147, 50%, 47%)
HSB	H: 147° S: 66% B: 70%
CMYK	C: 66% M: 0% Y: 37% K: 30%
SwiftUI Color	Color(red: 0.235, green: 0.702, blue: 0.443)
NSColor	NSColor(srgbRed: 0.235, green: 0.702, blue: 0.443, alpha: 1.0)

Every color, charted

Under every color sit three ramps of nine: tints toward white, a sweep through saturation, and shades toward black. The info panel adds triadic, analogous and complementary harmonies.

Hover a chip to read what it is; click it to make it the current color, copied and ready.

The ramps for #3CB371, as the app computes them. Point at a chip to mark it.

Triadic
Analogous
Complementary

Illustration: an open wooden treasure chest overflowing with fanned color swatch cards and round paint chips instead of coins.

Every picture hides a palette

Drop an image on the Palettes page, or click to choose one, and the app pulls out its main colors: anywhere from 2 to 12. Name the palette and keep it. Or stash colors on the scratchpad as you go, click Create palette, and give it a name.

Sharing sends plain text that anyone can read, with or without the app.

Hex Isles: #1B2A41 #2A7F9E #3CB371 #F2E6C9 #D9A441

These colors were found with Hex Marks the Spot.

Screenshot of the Palettes page: six colors pulled from a drawing of a cove (sand yellow, two sea blues, cream, navy and green), a stepper set to 6 with the caption “Drink up, me hearties! 6 colors hauled aboard.”, the dropped picture, and a Save palette button. — A picture of a cove, six colors hauled aboard.

Can everyone read it?

The contrast checker puts text in one color on a background of another and grades the pair against the WCAG accessibility levels: 4.5 for AA and 7 for AAA with normal text, 3 and 4.5 with large text.

The background follows your current color, and the text starts as black or white, whichever reads on it. The sample text is a treasure-hunt clue, so you judge real sentences, not Latin.

Dark map ink on parchment

9.52

AA Normal: pass
AAA Normal: pass
AA Large: pass
AAA Large: pass

Forest green on parchment

5.46

AA Normal: pass
AAA Normal: fail
AA Large: pass
AAA Large: pass

Illustration: an open ship’s logbook with rows of small color squares pasted onto its pages, a quill across it and a brass compass beside it.

Every find, safely stowed

The Library keeps what you found, sorted by how it got there. Your ship’s log keeps the last 500 picks; the scratchpad and your treasure chest of favorites are never trimmed.

Picked: Every color you have sampled, newest first. It fills itself.
Scratchpad: Colors you collect with the + button, waiting to become a palette.
Favorites: The colors and palettes you kept with the heart.
Palettes: Every palette you have saved, from an image or from your scratchpad.

Screenshot of the Library page with the Favorites tab selected. The line under the tabs reads “Your treasure chest: the colors and palettes you kept with the heart.” Below it, three favorite colors: #2A7F9E, #3CB371 and #B5462F. — The Library, Favorites tab.

Illustration: the parrot from the app icon perched in a ship’s crow’s nest, looking out over a calm sea toward a small island, a brass spyglass beside it.

Keeps watch from the menu bar

Hex Marks the Spot lives in the menu bar. Left-click its eyedropper to pick; right-click for a short menu of your recent colors, one click to copy.

In Settings you decide the rest:

Show it in the menu bar, the Dock, or both
Launch it at login
Keep its window above other apps
Play a sound after each pick
Copy the picked color automatically, or only when you ask
How many recent colors the menu lists, from 1 to 9

Keyboard shortcuts

The first two work from any app while Hex Marks the Spot is running, even with its window closed.

`⌃⌥9`	Pick a color (anywhere)
`⌃⌥0`	Open the main window (anywhere)
`esc`	Stop picking
`⌘1` to `⌘5`	Colors, Library, Contrast checker, Palettes, Settings
`⌘⇧T`	Keep the window on top
`⌘,`	Settings
`⌘?`	Quick Help

Your screen is a treasure map.

Three steps to the treasure

Call the lookout

Aim

Mark the spot