Hot Scary Summer is a big one. Color history lands as the headline feature, giving you a scrolling drawer of your last 20 foreground/background pairs — tap any chip to restore both colors instantly. Alongside that, there's a new Help view, a greatly expanded `pika://` URL scheme, a fix for color accuracy drift, and a pile of interface polish throughout.

This beta adds a dedicated Help view to the app, making it easier to discover keyboard shortcuts, URL triggers, and colour formats — as well as a refreshed About window and a matching help page on the website.

Beta 4 brings color history — a persistent timeline of every color pair you've picked, so you can pick freely without worrying about losing a combination you loved.

A small bug fix beta addressing colour values not updating when switching colour spaces in preferences.

This beta fixes an issue where picked colours could be inaccurate by a few values, depending on your display's colour profile.

Pika 1.4.1-beta1 is a maintenance release focused on code quality, improved animations, and better formatting across the board.

Pika 1.4.0 adds OKLCH as a brand new color format, along with a more compact UI for switching between formats.

This beta fixes the toolbar format dropdown being clipped in the title bar, along with all the fixes from beta2.

This beta brings improvements to the new format dropdown and fixes for OKLCH color math.

1.3.1-beta1 adds support for the OKLCH color format, a perceptually uniform color space that's becoming the standard for modern CSS color work.

1.3.0 adds Croatian (thanks @milotype) and Polish (thanks @rkopicki) to Pika, and improves translations across all languages.

The latest version of Pika introduces a new feature that provides visual confirmation when you pick a color. After selecting one, you'll see a subtle overlay displaying the picked color and its value, making it easier to confirm your selection at a glance. Shout out to @vkarampinis for his work on this one, and to @brzzdev for reporting the settings bug in macOS Tahoe that's also been fixed.

The latest beta introduces a new feature that provides visual confirmation when you pick a color. After selecting one, you'll see a subtle overlay displaying the picked color and its value, making it easier to confirm your selection at a glance. Shout out to @vkarampinis for his work on this one, and to @brzzdev for reporting the settings bug in macOS Tahoe that's also been fixed.

It's been a minute, but I am very amped about this release. 1.1.0 introduces four major feature enhancements that make Pika significantly better. APCA support, more consistent contrast calculations, and SwiftUI and LAB outputs and rendering. Thank you to @capjan, @johnswords, @alikia2x, and @sona-mini-studio for your contributions. Incredible!

It's been a minute, but I am very amped about this beta. 1.1.0-beta1 introduces four major feature enhancements that make Pika significantly better. APCA support, more consistent constrast calculations, and SwiftUI and LAB outputs and rendering. Thank you to @capjan, @johnswords, @alikia2x, and @sona-mini-studio for your contributions. Incredible!

Improvements to the system colour panel, including better support for colour spaces.

Since 1.0.0, Pika has been available on the Mac App Store. The goal with releasing it on the Mac App Store is to give people the option to pay for it. You can still download it for free from the website, but if you want to support the development of Pika, now you can. You'll get the same releases as everyone else (minus the betas) and you'll know you supported indie app development. Everyone wins. You can find it on the Mac App Store right here.

Just a couple bug fixes, nothing to see here.

Since 1.0.0, Pika has been available on the Mac App Store. The goal with releasing it on the Mac App Store is to give people the option to pay for it. You can still download it for free from the website, but if you want to support the development of Pika, now you can. You'll get the same releases as everyone else (minus the betas) and you'll know you supported indie app development. Everyone wins. You can find it on the Mac App Store right here.

This release marks the big 1.0. Pika has been noodling along as 0.0.X releases since its inception, so in an attempt at acknowledging that it's a functional app, it's time for a whole number. This release also marks the first time it will be available on the Mac App Store.

The goal with releasing it on the Mac App Store is to give people the option to pay for it. You can still download it for free from the website, but if you want to support the development of Pika, you can pay for it on the Mac App Store. You'll get the same releases as everyone else (minus the betas) and you'll know you supported indie app development. Everyone wins. You can find it on the Mac App Store right here.

This release might be the most excited I've been about a release of Pika in a minute (and I'm usually pretty excited). It adds an incredible amount of functionality, in that you can now use the system picker alongside Pika. That means you can drop in hex codes, darken and lighten colours, and generally have more granular control over colour contrast. It makes finding the right colour possible, which hasn't been possible previously.

And it's all thanks to suggestions from @alexkaessner. Thanks for being great.

And if that wasn't enough, it also adds support for OpenGL colours (cheers @cadupuy), simplified and traditional Chinese translations (thanks @Ssssv11), and fixes a bunch of bugs throughout the app, including some issues with hovering, which seems to finally work how I'd expect in Sequoia (credit to @abinesan and @ajijoyo).

Gearing up to release 0.0.18. This release fixes some bugs throughout the app, including some issues with hovering (thanks @abinesan and @ajijoyo).

This beta might be the most excited I've been about a release of Pika in a minute (and I'm usually pretty excited). It adds an incredible amount of functionality, in that you can now use the system picker alongside Pika. That means you can drop in hex codes, darken and lighten colours, and generally have more granular control over colour contrast.

And if that wasn't enough, it also adds support for OpenGL colours. Joy!

And it's all thanks to suggestions from @alexkaessner and @cadupuy. Thanks for being great.

This release adds simplified and traditional Chinese tranlations thanks to @Ssssv11. Thanks so much!

Version 0.0.17! Happy days!

This release increases the number of keyboard shortcuts (and updates swap color to <kbd>x</kbd> to more closely match other design software), and adds the `pika://` URL scheme so you can write more complex scripts to pick, format, and copy colors. You can learn more about it here (and thanks @Hydro8). It also adds a setting to have Pika show at launch (thanks @franciscolourenco).

Minor update to the URL schemes in this update. You can now append the format you'd like to the `pika://` URL scheme when picking and copying. You can learn more about it here (thanks @Hydro8).

Somehow we are nearly three months through 2024. That's not relevant to anything, just, whoa.

This release increases the number of keyboard shortcuts (and updates swap color to <kbd>x</kbd> to more closely match other design software), and adds the `pika://` URL scheme so you can write more complex scripts to pick, format, and copy colors. You can learn more about it here (and thanks @Hydro8). It also adds a setting to have Pika show at launch (thanks @franciscolourenco).

It's been a minute! This release adds Spanish language support (thanks x 1,000,000, @axiel7). It also fixes a reeeeeal annoying bug that a number of people have reported, where the Pika icon in the menu bar would appear in places it most definitely 100% should not appear. Thanks for looking after it, @bikrrr!

(It's Spanish for catching bugs.)

This beta fixes a reeeeeal annoying bug that a lot of people have reported, where the Pika icon in the menu bar would appear in places it most definitely 100% should not. Thanks for looking after it, @bikrrr!

It also adds Spanish language support. Thanks x 1,000,000, @axiel7!

This release fixes a pretty glaring bug that's been there for a while—auto-updates don't auto-initialise until you manually update the first time. So that's not ideal. It also sorts out a small bug on a link to the Pika website, and adds a link to give feedback or report bugs via GitHub Issues.

Also, as a result of the changes to the way Pika handles updates, it needs to be downloaded ✨fresh✨, so you might find the download size is a little bigger than normal. My humble apologies, and we should be back to standard functioning updates from here on out. Phew.

This beta fixes a pretty glaring bug that's been there for a while—auto-updates don't auto-initialise until you manually update the first time. So that's not ideal. Phew, let's just pretend this never happened, hey?

This beta fixes a small bug on a link to the Pika website, and adds a link to give feedback or report bugs via GitHub Issues. It's a preeeeeeetty simple one.

Say hello to Pika-but-not-as-a-menubar-app. In Preferences you can now choose to run Pika as a regular app, meaning it behaves like a regular app—that includes shortcuts, a macOS menubar, standard window management, etc.

It also adds German translation (massive thanks to @david-swift for submitting it) and fixes issues with launching at login on macOS 13 Ventura.

This beta explores the Pika-but-not-as-a-menubar-app. That's right, in Preferences you can now choose to run Pika as a regular app, meaning it behaves like a regular app. That includes shortcuts, a macOS menubar, standard window management, etc.

It also adds German translation. Massive thanks to @david-swift for submitting it.

Change is as good as a holiday, so this release introduces the most signicant change to the core functionality in a while—a new default layout for the WCAG compliance information, and the introduction of an appearance option to toggle back to the old view if that's preferable.

Need to export colors without any formatting? Well, now you can, with the newly simplified and consoliated preferences pane. Display and export colors for either CSS, design applications, or in an unformatted style. Works with text and JSON exports, too, so everyone wins!

The preferences panel has grown over time, and this update ensures it will continue to display (and be scrollable) should the display available be smaller than its height.

And finally, incredibly, Pika hasn't had undo / redo, which is silly, because it should. So this update adds it. Thanks to @sj26 for the suggestion.

Incredibly, Pika doesn't have undo / redo, which is silly, because it should. So this update adds it. Thanks to @sj26 for the suggestion.

The preferences panel has grown over time, and this update ensures it will continue to display (and be scrollable) should the display available be smaller than its height. (Also, it sneaks in a couple of spacing fixes.)

This beta introduces the most signicant change to the core functionality in a while—a new default layout for the WCAG compliance information, and the introduction of an appearance option to toggle back to the old view if that's preferable.

Phew, bugs squashed! Features added!

Need to export colors without any formatting? Well, now you can, with the newly simplified and consoliated preferences pane. Display and export colors for either CSS, design applications, or in an unformatted style. Works with text and JSON exports, too, so everyone wins!

This release adds a much requested feature with automatic copy on pick. This, coupled with the global shortcut, means you can now use the app without ever needing to see it at all.

This release adds a much requested feature with automatic copy on pick—that means you can now use Pika without ever needing to actually see the app.

Thanks to you, the community, this is a big update that's packed with big features, including the first internationalisation effort—French language support. Très bien! If you'd like to get involved with Pika, or if you have any issues or feedback, head over to GitHub.

Massively appreciate all your testing on the first beta.

Excited to try out some new ideas in this beta, along with, drumroll... support for French (merci, @AClmbr!)

Excited to roll out some changes to how Pika looks and works, with the goal of making it faster and easier to use. This update includes an overhaul of the swatch itself, relocation of the color format to the toolbar, and general accessibility improvements.

Final tweaks before release.

Minor bug fixes and updates.

Excited to try out some pretty significant changes to the UI in this first beta for v0.0.10. It includes an overhaul of the swatch itself, removing the contextual menu, and the relocation of the color format option from preferences to the toolbar.

Super excited about this update, which includes support for the Touch Bar, the first building blocks for localization, and some rad new features to make picking colours easier. I've really appreciated your feedback and suggestions, and a massive cheers to everyone who has shared Pika.

Some minor updates, fixes, and a quick way to swap colours.

A wild beta appears! Super excited about this one, and it's been so gratifying to see all the ideas and messages.

Hello! Just a quick note to say a massive thanks to everyone who has taken the time to contribute suggestions, feedback, crash logs and encouragement. A bunch of rad new features are in this update, and it's largely thanks to the community. If you have any issues or feedback, let me know on GitHub.

Minor fix to preference settings, which feels like a shame to have to do a whole update for. Oh well, such is life.

Phew, second release / update testing. This adds window reinitialisation when launching the app in Alfred / Spotlight / et al, if it's already open. Win win.

The first release of Pika, an open-source colour picker app for macOS.