Google’s new app will help you choose colors in Android 17

For professionals who work with images and videos, knowing the exact colors they are dealing with is essential. Observing it isn’t always enough, as many jobs require accurate color reproduction. This is why hexadecimal codes are often used to represent colors, providing a standard way to accurately reproduce them in different software. While most business apps and web browsers have built-in color pickers that can retrieve these codes, Android currently does not have this feature. This could change in next year’s Android 17 release, however.

While browsing the new 2510 Android Canary update released by Google this week, I discovered a new system app named “EyeDropper”. This is a small, simple app with one goal: to provide a public API for other Android apps to implement a color picker. This new native solution means developers will no longer need to create their own in-app color pickers or import third-party libraries, simplifying development, saving time and slightly reducing the file size of their apps.

The API works by asking an application to send a specific intent (android.intent.action.OPEN_EYE_DROPPER) — a message requesting an action from another application — to the EyeDropper application. In response, EyeDropper launches an activity with a capture of the current screen and a picker that the user can move to choose the desired color. For example, a photo editing application could use this API to allow a user to retrieve the exact color value of a specific pixel in an image.

Here’s a quick demo of the EyeDropper app. As you can see, it allows you to move a cursor over a static capture of the screen. A magnified window above the slider displays the exact pixel selected, and you can use the on-screen arrow keys for precise single-pixel adjustments. When you’re done, you press the “Apply” button to return to the application that called EyeDropper. However, you won’t see a color value in the demo. Since I invoked the application manually, there was no calling application to receive the color code; normally it would be returned directly to the application that sent the request.

Google clearly has its “Android on PC” project in mind with this application, because it not only implements functionality of The desktop version of Chrome but also represents large screen Android devices. For example, upon launch, the application checks connected devices to determine its operating mode. If it detects a mouse and keyboard, it assumes a desktop environment and activates logic to handle multiple displays. Otherwise, it defaults to a touchscreen interface.

Although we spotted the EyeDropper app in the latest Android Canary build, we don’t expect it to appear in the upcoming Android 16 QPR2 or QPR3 updates. The feature requires a new API for apps and the window for adding new APIs in Android 16 has closed. Android 16 QPR2 reached platform stability last month, and QPR3 won’t introduce any new APIs, so we’ll likely see it in Android 17 at the earliest.

While Google could potentially introduce this to existing devices via a Google Play system update, there is currently no indication that it plans to do so. However, a lot can happen between now and Android 17, but we’ll keep you posted if we learn anything new.