🎨 Minimal Color Picker

A tiny, blazing-fast, and distraction-free color picker for Windows, written in pure C (Win32 API). Designed to be as lightweight and performant as possible while providing essential features for developers and designers.

Features

• Zero-Bloat Performance: Built purely with the Win32 API and GDI. Extremely low CPU and RAM footprint.
• Instant Activation: Summon instantly via a global system hotkey without interrupting your workflow.
• Magnifying Loupe: A smooth 6x zoom loupe attached to your cursor for precise, pixel-perfect selection.
• Color Averaging: Grab exactly what you need. Supports 1x1 (single pixel), 3x3, 5x5, and 15x15 pixel averaging modes.
• Clipboard Ready: Instantly copies the selected color to your clipboard in standard Hex format (e.g., #1A2B3C).
• Non-Intrusive UI: A "Copied" toast notification right at your cursor that instantly fades away.
• System Tray Integration: Runs quietly in the background. Right-click the tray icon to change settings or exit.
• High-DPI Aware: Renders sharply and maps pixels perfectly on modern 4K/High-DPI displays.
• Portable Configuration: Settings are saved automatically to a simple .ini file in the exact same folder as the executable.

Usage

This app is fully portable. Simply extract the .exe anywhere in your User folder (like Documents or a dedicated portable apps folder). Avoid placing it in C:\Program Files\ so the app can successfully save your settings to its .ini file

Once the application is running, it minimizes automatically to your system tray.

Controls

• Summon Picker: Press Ctrl + Shift + D (Default, may be changed in the .ini
• Select & Copy: Left Click
• Cancel/Dismiss: Esc or Right Click

System Tray Menu

Right-click the eyedropper icon in your Windows System Tray to:

• Trigger the picker manually.
• Change the Sample Size (1x1, 3x3, 5x5, 15x15).
• Exit the application.

⚙️ Configuration (.ini file)

Upon first run, the app generates a [App-Name].ini file in the same directory as the executable. You can edit this file to customize your hotkey.

Contributing / Build Instructions

Because this project is engineered to be as tiny and performant as possible, compiling the Release (x64) build is a bit more complex than standard Windows applications. We completely strip out the C Runtime (CRT) to achieve a minimal footprint.

If you'd like to contribute or build from source, follow these precise configuration steps.

Prerequisites

• Visual Studio with the "Desktop development with C++" workload installed.
• Platform Toolset: v145 (Ensure you have the latest build tools).
• Windows SDK: Version 10.0 or higher.
• C++ Standard: ISO C++20 Standard (/std:c++20).

Project Configuration Guide

If you are importing the source files into a new project, you must mimic the provided .vcxproj settings.

1. Compiler Settings (C/C++) for Release/x64

To keep the binary size as small as possible, configure the following in Configuration Properties > C/C++:

• Security Checks: Disable SDL checks (/sdl-).
• Code Generation: Disable Buffer Security Check (/GS-).
• Language: Set C++ Language Standard to stdcpp20.

3. Linker Settings for Release/x64

Because we are building without the standard C library, the linker needs specific instructions to find the entry point. Navigate to Configuration Properties > Linker:

• Input > Ignore All Default Libraries: Set to Yes (/NODEFAULTLIB).
• Advanced > Entry Point: Explicitly set this to WinMain.