I'd definitely prefer to add 1MB to my binary than to make a remote API call, and I can always bump the version if I want the latest and greatest names.
Wow, pretty cool to see the color-names project here. I made a simple color guessing website a few years ago [0] using your library.
I almost forgot it till someone reminds how they enjoyed it ([1]).
> I get the same 5 colors every time?
That's probably a bug.
> Fun! If I may make one suggestion, could you please show the color I picked next to the real one once it is revealed?
The color of the color-name changes to what you picked.
I fully approve of this app. My use case is CSS, more specifically SVG. I put SVG in custom properties for things like icons, then use them as pseudo elements, thereby keeping decoration out of the HTML and avoiding downloads for SVG specified in CSS. My SVG is always human readable and simple.
The slight problem with this is that I don't like having to escape the '#' character for colours. I prefer the nearest name, e.g. 'Chocolate' (which is orange).
Hence I have bookmarked this page.
One observation, I have now moved to oklch for everything else. I only do named colours and oklch, hex codes have gone the way of CMYK for me.
Are there any plans to make this tool oklch-friendly?
once you receive 250+ karma, the topcolor setting enables in your profile, allowing you to specify a custom color code for the top bar of HN. this is a ranking of every custom topcolor set by users. :)
Cool project! I wonder what commercial use cases come from it. On the My First Million podcast they talked a about a company selling color predictions to brands for multiple six figures. Maybe you can find correlations and predictions in the data one day.
I like the falling bricks effect although it's quite janky on Brave on Android.
I think it would be effective on the landing page to have a form where I can enter a hex code and get the color name. I've recently tried a couple of web apps like this to get makes for my brand colors.
This is nicely done, but can you please explain why you need this? What is the use of the color names when you already know the actual color value and can use it?
N=1 but I'm colourblind and frequently I need to talk to someone about a UI colour while not having any idea what the colour is called, this kind of thing is useful for me.
I would also find such a tool useful, but names like “Watermelon Sugar”, “Tidal”, or “Singapore Orchid” don’t really help me at all. Just tell me something like “dark brown”, “pale green”, “hot pink”, “tan”, etc.
If you scroll down a bit, you will see that the api provides all kind of lists, there are plenty that are more descriptive or simpler depending on what you are going for.
N>1, proportion of colourblind people depends on the origin, but there are many of us. In Europe, nearly 10% of males are impacted by one of the colourblind variant, aka millions of people. Some of those people are dev, designers, or working alongside some sort color requirements, but none of them are graphists and can choose colors.
Having a tool to provide a name instead of an hex code is useful to discuss colors with other stakeholders (customers, colleagues, etc...)
> Having a tool to provide a name instead of an hex code is useful to discuss colors with other stakeholders (customers, colleagues, etc...)
But how useful are names that this website shows, e.g. the first few random names I got were "Singapore Orchid", "Scented Spring", "Lamiaceae", and "Lunatic Sky Dancer"?
I made a similar tool that can work on images and the camera. In addition to color picking, it adds moving stripes so you can visually tell the difference between colors you might otherwise not tell apart.
That's great to hear! I've gotten some very positive feedback from sight-impaired users for this little tool that uses the API: https://words.github.io/color-description/ — it turns colors into descriptive text (no AI involved)
Unfortunately I'm not a chameleon, so I can't magic it up on my skin mid-conversation. We communicate verbally, I need a name or I can't talk about it.
This can be useful for accessibility. For example you might have a colour palette that users can add to, but the colours are only stored as hex codes. Giving a screen reader user just RGB values isn't as helpful as providing a name alongside it.
Thanks! Good question – it's mostly about readability and communication. Hex codes are precise but not intuitive. Names give context, like saying “salmon” instead of #fa8072. That’s helpful in design tools, UI previews, generative art, or even debugging.
Also, the API works the other way around too – you can search by name to get the matching color: https://api.color.pizza/v1/docs/#api-Default-getColorNames. I did not add it to the website yet, because I don't have good UI ideas for it yet.
Beautifully made! But I struggle a little for thinking of use cases? Maybe add some to the readme.
Also, I think adding a kind of ‘main color’ would be useful. For example ‘shore’ being in the category ‘blue’ or maybe even ‘light blue’. Because for ‘shore’ itself I personally would associate with sand and maybe yellow.
Oh I mostly use it for my own apps – it just feels more human-readable than hex codes. But yeah, you're right, I should add some example use cases to the readme!
I noticed the other day that the colour picker in Microsoft Termimal now gives the Web Colour names as one moves the mouse pointer around. I don't know how long it has been doing that without my noticing. I don't change colours all of that often. (-:
I do have to ask, though. Why would I ever want to resolve a color name as a network request instead of calling a function?
[0] https://colorguesser.com/ [1] https://x.com/wifeofnoob/status/1935788167086436375
edit: I get the same 5 colors every time?
> Fun! If I may make one suggestion, could you please show the color I picked next to the real one once it is revealed? The color of the color-name changes to what you picked.
Lilac Rose
Your score
81/100
First try!
My final score was 286/500 :(
At any rate, it keeps using the same colors, so this needs to be improved.
I remember there were a couple of websites like this, however, with random colors, better scoring, etc.
For example I found these:
https://color.method.ac
https://hexcodle.com (this one has a 10 hour limit per game, ugh)
But there were many others. Ideas? I am looking for something like colorguesser.com.
The slight problem with this is that I don't like having to escape the '#' character for colours. I prefer the nearest name, e.g. 'Chocolate' (which is orange).
Hence I have bookmarked this page.
One observation, I have now moved to oklch for everything else. I only do named colours and oklch, hex codes have gone the way of CMYK for me.
Are there any plans to make this tool oklch-friendly?
https://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_orange
Cool project! I wonder what commercial use cases come from it. On the My First Million podcast they talked a about a company selling color predictions to brands for multiple six figures. Maybe you can find correlations and predictions in the data one day.
I think it would be effective on the landing page to have a form where I can enter a hex code and get the color name. I've recently tried a couple of web apps like this to get makes for my brand colors.
But how useful are names that this website shows, e.g. the first few random names I got were "Singapore Orchid", "Scented Spring", "Lamiaceae", and "Lunatic Sky Dancer"?
https://unblind.tech
Also, the API works the other way around too – you can search by name to get the matching color: https://api.color.pizza/v1/docs/#api-Default-getColorNames. I did not add it to the website yet, because I don't have good UI ideas for it yet.
Also, I think adding a kind of ‘main color’ would be useful. For example ‘shore’ being in the category ‘blue’ or maybe even ‘light blue’. Because for ‘shore’ itself I personally would associate with sand and maybe yellow.
Like here:
https://farbvelo.elastiq.ch/ or https://meodai.github.io/poline/
Thanks a lot for the feedback, I really appreciate it!