What Color Is This? Find the Name of Any Color

How a color gets a name

Color names come from reference libraries: lists of colors that each have a name and an exact value. The app's library has 30,241 names, many of them evocative, like Mermaid's Tail. It compares your color with every entry and returns the one that looks closest. The name therefore describes the closest known color; it is not a property of your pixel.

Because the match is a nearest neighbour, the name can stay the same while your color shifts slightly, and a small change in the reading can switch the name to a neighbouring entry. That is expected behaviour, not a bug.

What the match percentage tells you

The percentage next to the name shows how close your color is to the library entry. In the high nineties the difference is hard to see side by side. Lower values mean the closest named color is visibly different, and the name is only a rough guide.

When the percentage is low, or the result says Approximate, take a second reading from a flatter part of the image. If you need precision, describe the color by its HEX code and use the name only as a friendly label.

Why two tools give different names

Different apps use different libraries. Some use the web's built-in CSS names such as SteelBlue, some use large lists of evocative names, and some use manufacturer catalogs. They also measure closeness differently, so the same HEX code can be called slate in one tool and steel grey in another.

Neither is wrong. For conversations, pick the name your audience recognises; for anything that has to be reproduced exactly, such as a brand color or a stylesheet, pass on the code.

Finding the name of a HEX code

Typing a code into the library search finds an entry only when that exact code is in the library. To name any other code, for example from a brand guide, display it as a swatch on a screen, take a screenshot and pick it: the picker then returns the closest name. Names are useful for alt text, describing a palette to a client or labelling colors in documentation, because they are easier to talk about than six characters.

Color names and accessibility

Names help people who see color differently. Someone with color vision deficiency can point the camera at a shirt or a cable and get a word instead of a guess, and designers can add names to swatches so a palette makes sense without relying on color alone. The library names are in English; on iOS 18 and later a Translate button shows them in your language. Keep names short and familiar when they are meant for other people.

Frequently asked questions

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