Matching a color you see on a website, whether it is a brand's exact blue or a background gradient, is hard to do by eye. A color picker extension adds an eyedropper to your toolbar that samples any pixel on screen and gives you the code in the format you need, saving a trip to a separate design tool.
How a color picker eyedropper extension works
Click the extension's icon, then click any point on the page, and it reads that pixel's color and shows the hex code, usually with RGB and HSL as well. Many also keep a short history of recently picked colors so you can compare a few before choosing one.
Get a hex color picker code from any web page
Beyond simple sampling, useful color pickers let you copy the hex code straight to your clipboard, zoom in for pixel-level accuracy, and sometimes generate a palette from the page. This matters when you are matching a brand color exactly rather than approximating it.
When you don't need a color picker extension
If you only need a color occasionally, your operating system may already include a screen color picker, or your browser's developer tools panel can inspect an element's computed color. A dedicated extension is worth it when you pick colors often and want one-click access from the toolbar.