A paint brush and a splat of paint in your panel.
Click the brush to pick any color on screen. Click the splat to see your history.

Features • Screenshots • Installation • Usage • Languages • FAQ

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_{The bristles and the splat always take on the color you picked last.}

✨ Features

🖌️ One-click picking	Click the brush and pick any pixel on your screen, on Wayland and X11.
🎨 Living icon	The brush bristles and the paint splat fade into your last picked color.
🕘 Color history	Up to 30 recent colors, newest first. Duplicates move to the top instead of piling up.
🔁 HEX ⇄ RGB	A segmented switch shows every value as #FF2D55 or rgb(255, 45, 85).
📋 Instant copy	A picked color goes straight to the clipboard. Click any history entry to copy it again.
🌗 Light & Dark	Follows your Plasma color scheme with a clean, modern look.
🌍 Speaks your language	The UI follows your system language: 9 languages are included.
🎛️ Manual picker	Need a color that isn't on screen? Open the color dialog next to the pick button.

📸 Screenshots

Light · HEX values	Dark · RGB values

_{System language German: the whole UI switches automatically, including the “copied” toast.}

📦 Installation

Option 1: Add Widgets dialog (recommended)

1. Download ColorBrush-x.y.z.plasmoid from the latest release.
2. Right-click your panel → Add Widgets… → Get New Widgets → Install Widget From Local File…
3. Pick the downloaded file, then search for ColorBrush and drag it into your panel.

Option 2: Terminal

kpackagetool6 -t Plasma/Applet -i ColorBrush-1.3.0.plasmoid

To update later, use -u instead of -i.

Option 3: From source

git clone https://github.com/Swenix-dev/ColorBrush.git
cd ColorBrush
./install.sh

install.sh installs or updates the widget and removes the old pre-release package (ChromaBrush) if it is still there. To remove ColorBrush, run ./uninstall.sh.

Tip

After an update, reload Plasma so the new version is used:

systemctl --user restart plasma-plasmashell

Requirements

Component	Notes
KDE Plasma 6.0+	Developed on Fedora 44 with Plasma 6.7
KWin	Provides the screen color picker (Wayland and X11)
gdbus	Part of glib2, preinstalled on almost every distribution
plasma5support	Ships with Plasma 6

🖱️ Usage

Action	What happens
Click the brush	Starts the color picker right away. Click anywhere on screen; press Esc to cancel.
Click the splat	Opens the popup with the current color and your history.
Click a history entry	Copies the value in the active format (HEX or RGB).
Hover a history entry	Shows buttons to copy or delete that color.
HEX | RGB switch	Changes how every value is shown and copied. The choice is remembered.
Palette button	Opens a color dialog to add a color by hand.
Right-click the widget	Pick color, switch HEX/RGB, or clear the history.

🌍 Languages

ColorBrush picks its language from your system settings. No configuration is needed.

	Language		Language		Language
🇬🇧	English	🇩🇪	Deutsch	🇫🇷	Français
🇪🇸	Español	🇮🇹	Italiano	🇳🇱	Nederlands
🇵🇱	Polski	🇧🇷	Português (Brasil)	🇹🇷	Türkçe

If your language is missing, ColorBrush falls back to English. Want to add yours? It only takes a few minutes. See po/README.md, then open a pull request or a translation issue.

⚙️ How it works

ColorBrush is written entirely in QML. To read a pixel from the screen, it asks KWin over D-Bus:

gdbus call --session --dest org.kde.KWin \
  --object-path /ColorPicker --method org.kde.kwin.ColorPicker.pick

KWin shows its crosshair, you click, and KWin returns the color as an ARGB value. ColorBrush converts it to HEX and RGB, stores it in the widget settings and copies it to your clipboard. Nothing leaves your computer.

🩺 Troubleshooting

The popup shows “Color picker failed”

Run the D-Bus command from How it works in a terminal. If it prints something like (uint32 4294914389,), KWin works and you should open an issue. If it fails, check that you are running a KWin session (not another window manager).

The widget doesn't load or shows an error

Start it in its own window to see the log:

plasmawindowed org.seaq.colorbrush

Paste the output into a bug report.

The widget is too narrow after updating from ChromaBrush

Remove the old widget from the panel and add ColorBrush again, so Plasma gives it room for both the brush and the splat.

🗂️ Project structure

ColorBrush/
├── package/                      # the plasmoid itself
│   ├── metadata.json
│   └── contents/
│       ├── config/main.xml       # settings: history, HEX/RGB, auto copy
│       ├── locale/               # compiled translations (.mo)
│       └── ui/
│           ├── main.qml          # panel icons, picker logic, clipboard
│           ├── FullView.qml      # the popup
│           ├── BrushIcon.qml     # vector paint brush
│           ├── Splat.qml         # vector paint splat
│           └── SegmentedControl.qml
├── po/                           # translation sources (.po / .pot)
├── scripts/                      # translation helpers
├── screenshots/
├── build.sh                      # builds ColorBrush-<version>.plasmoid
├── install.sh / uninstall.sh
└── CHANGELOG.md

🛠️ Building a release

./build.sh          # → ColorBrush-1.3.0.plasmoid

Pushing a tag like v1.3.0 triggers the GitHub Actions workflow, which builds the .plasmoid and attaches it to a new release automatically.

🤝 Contributing

Bug reports, ideas and translations are very welcome. Please use the issue templates. For code changes, fork the repo, create a branch and open a pull request.

📄 License

ColorBrush is free software, released under the GNU General Public License v2.0 or later.

Made with 🎨 by Swenix-dev

_{If ColorBrush brightens your desktop, consider leaving a ⭐}