Launching Pikr: A Color Picker for Accessibility-Minded Developers
After building several Rust projects, I'm launching Pikr, a color picker that makes checking WCAG contrast ratios effortless. Here's the story behind it.
If you’ve ever worked on a UI, whether as a developer or designer, you know the dance. Pick a color. Check if it’s accessible. Open another tool. Paste the hex code. Check the contrast ratio. Realize it fails AA. Go back. Adjust. Repeat.
It’s tedious, and I’ve done it hundreds of times.
So I made a tool for it.
Introducing Pikr
Pikr is a color picker with built-in WCAG contrast checking. Pick any color on your screen and it tells you right away whether it meets AA or AAA. No second app, no pasting hex codes into a web tool.
The Problem It Solves
Accessibility matters, but the tooling around it has always felt fragmented. You have your design tool, your color picker, and then some separate contrast checker, usually a website. Every time you want to verify a color choice, you’re context-switching.
I wanted something integrated. Pick a color, see the contrast ratio against your background, know immediately if it passes. All in one place.
What It Does
Pikr keeps things focused:
- Picks colors from anywhere on screen, system-wide, in any app
- Shows AA and AAA contrast compliance as you pick
- Outputs Hex, RGB, HSB, HSL, LAB, and OpenGL
- Stays out of the way until you need it
Nothing beyond that. I’ve grown to appreciate tools that do one thing.
Why Tauri?
After spending time with Rust building Feedo and Hazelnut, I wanted to apply what I learned to a desktop app with an actual GUI. Tauri was the natural choice. It combines a Rust backend with a web-based frontend, resulting in small, fast, native applications.
The development experience was smooth. Tauri handles the cross-platform complexity (system tray, global shortcuts, native dialogs) while letting me use familiar web technologies for the interface. The final binary is tiny compared to Electron-based alternatives, and it feels snappy.
Pikr currently runs on macOS and Linux, with Windows support coming soon.
Shipping Something
There’s something satisfying about taking a personal frustration and turning it into a tool other people can use. Pikr started as a fix for my own workflow, but accessibility affects everyone building interfaces. If it saves someone else the tab-switching dance, good.
The app is available at getpikr.app for $5, or $3 right now with a 40% launch discount. It’s not free, but it’s also not trying to be a subscription or harvest your data. Just a small tool that does its job.
What’s Next?
I’ll keep refining Pikr based on feedback and my own usage. Windows support is the immediate priority. Beyond that, I have some ideas for features, but I want to be careful not to bloat it. The simplicity is intentional.
If you’re a developer or designer who cares about accessibility (and you should), give it a look. And if you have feedback, I’d love to hear it. 🎨