react-colorful

What is react-colorful?

The react-colorful package is a tiny (approximately 1.5 KB) color picker component for React applications that is fast and without dependencies. It provides a modern, accessible, and extensible color picking solution that can be easily integrated into any React project.

What are react-colorful's main functionalities?

Hex Color Picker

This feature allows users to pick a color using a hex color picker. The component manages the color state and provides a callback for when the color changes.

{"import { HexColorPicker } from 'react-colorful';\n\nfunction App() {\n  const [color, setColor] = useState('#aabbcc');\n\n  return <HexColorPicker color={color} onChange={setColor} />;\n}"}

RGB Color Picker

This feature provides an RGB color picker where users can select a color based on its red, green, and blue components. The color state is managed by the component and updates are provided through a callback function.

{"import { RgbColorPicker } from 'react-colorful';\n\nfunction App() {\n  const [color, setColor] = useState({ r: 170, g: 187, b: 204 });\n\n  return <RgbColorPicker color={color} onChange={setColor} />;\n}"}

HSL Color Picker

This feature enables users to pick a color using HSL (Hue, Saturation, Lightness) values. The component allows for the selection of HSL values and provides updates through a change callback.

{"import { HslColorPicker } from 'react-colorful';\n\nfunction App() {\n  const [color, setColor] = useState({ h: 210, s: 50, l: 60 });\n\n  return <HslColorPicker color={color} onChange={setColor} />;\n}"}

Custom Color Picker

This feature allows for the creation of custom color pickers using the react-colorful library. Users can define their own UI and logic for the color picker while still leveraging the underlying functionality provided by react-colorful.

{"import { CustomPicker } from 'react-colorful';\nimport { useState } from 'react';\n\nconst MyColorPicker = CustomPicker(({ hex, onChange }) => (\n  <div>\n    <div style={{ backgroundColor: hex, width: '100px', height: '100px' }} />\n    <input value={hex} onChange={(e) => onChange(e.target.value)} />\n  </div>\n));\n\nfunction App() {\n  const [color, setColor] = useState('#aabbcc');\n\n  return <MyColorPicker color={color} onChange={setColor} />;\n}"}

Other packages similar to react-colorful

react-color

React-color is a collection of color pickers for React with a larger size compared to react-colorful. It offers more built-in picker styles and customization options but at the cost of a larger bundle size.

rc-color-picker

Rc-color-picker is another color picker component for React that provides a simple interface for color selection. It is less lightweight than react-colorful and offers fewer customization options.

coloreact

Coloreact is a color picker component for React that is similar to react-colorful in terms of size and simplicity. However, it may not be as widely used or as actively maintained as react-colorful.

README

react-colorful is a tiny color picker component for React and Preact apps.

Features

• 🗜 Small: Just 2,8 KB gzipped (13x lighter than react-color).
• 🌳 Tree-shakeable: Only the parts you use will be imported into your app's bundle.
• 🚀 Fast: Built with hooks and functional components only.
• 🛡 Bulletproof: Written in strict TypeScript and has 100% test coverage.
• 🗂 Typed: Ships with types included
• 😍 Simple: The interface is straightforward and easy to use.
• 👫 Cross-browser: Works out-of-the-box for most browsers, regardless of version.
• 📲 Mobile-friendly: Supports mobile devices and touch screens.
• 💬 Accessible: Follows the WAI-ARIA guidelines to support users of assistive technologies.
• 💨 No dependencies

Live demos

• Website
• HEX Color Picker (CodeSandbox)
• RGBA Color Picker (CodeSandbox)

Table of Contents

• Getting Started
• Supported Color Models
• Customization
• How to paste or type a color?
• Code Recipes
• TypeScript Support
• Usage with Preact
• Browser Support
• Why react-colorful?
• Projects using react-colorful
• Ports

Getting Started

npm install react-colorful

import { HexColorPicker } from "react-colorful";

const YourComponent = () => {
  const [color, setColor] = useState("#aabbcc");
  return <HexColorPicker color={color} onChange={setColor} />;
};

Supported Color Models

We provide 12 additional color picker components for different color models, unless your app needs a HEX string as an input/output format.

How to use another color model

Available pickers

Import	Value example
{ HexColorPicker }	"#ffffff"
{ HexAlphaColorPicker }	"#ffffff88"
{ RgbColorPicker }	{ r: 255, g: 255, b: 255 }
{ RgbaColorPicker }	{ r: 255, g: 255, b: 255, a: 1 }
{ RgbStringColorPicker }	"rgb(255, 255, 255)"
{ RgbaStringColorPicker }	"rgba(255, 255, 255, 1)"
{ HslColorPicker }	{ h: 0, s: 0, l: 100 }
{ HslaColorPicker }	{ h: 0, s: 0, l: 100, a: 1 }
{ HslStringColorPicker }	"hsl(0, 0%, 100%)"
{ HslaStringColorPicker }	"hsla(0, 0%, 100%, 1)"
{ HsvColorPicker }	{ h: 0, s: 0, v: 100 }
{ HsvaColorPicker }	{ h: 0, s: 0, v: 100, a: 1 }
{ HsvStringColorPicker }	"hsv(0, 0%, 100%)"
{ HsvaStringColorPicker }	"hsva(0, 0%, 100%, 1)"

Code example

import { RgbColorPicker } from "react-colorful";

const YourComponent = () => {
  const [color, setColor] = useState({ r: 50, g: 100, b: 150 });
  return <RgbColorPicker color={color} onChange={setColor} />;
};

Live demo →

Customization

The easiest way to tweak react-colorful is to create another stylesheet to override the default styles.

.your-component .react-colorful {
  height: 240px;
}
.your-component .react-colorful__saturation {
  border-radius: 4px 4px 0 0;
}
.your-component .react-colorful__hue {
  height: 40px;
  border-radius: 0 0 4px 4px;
}
.your-component .react-colorful__hue-pointer {
  width: 12px;
  height: inherit;
  border-radius: 0;
}

See examples →

How to paste or type a color?

As you probably noticed the color picker itself does not include an input field, but do not worry if you need one. react-colorful is a modular library that allows you to build any picker you need. Since v2.1 we provide an additional component that works perfectly in pair with our color picker.

How to use HexColorInput

import { HexColorPicker, HexColorInput } from "react-colorful";

const YourComponent = () => {
  const [color, setColor] = useState("#aabbcc");
  return (
    <div>
      <HexColorPicker color={color} onChange={setColor} />
      <HexColorInput color={color} onChange={setColor} />
    </div>
  );
};

Live demo →

Property	Default	Description
alpha	false	Allows #rgba and #rrggbbaa color formats
prefixed	false	Enables # prefix displaying

HexColorInput does not have any default styles, but it also accepts all properties that a regular input tag does (such as className, placeholder and autoFocus). That means you can place and modify this component as you like. Also, that allows you to combine the color picker and input in different ways:

<HexColorInput color={color} onChange={setColor} placeholder="Type a color" prefixed alpha />

Code Recipes

• Value debouncing
• Popover picker
• Preset colors (color squares)
• Picker that accepts any color input
• Text field to be able to type/copy/paste a color
• Custom styles and layout

TypeScript Support

react-colorful supports TypeScript and ships with types in the library itself; no need for any other install.

How you can get the most from our TypeScript support

While not only typing its own functions and variables, it can also help you type yours. Depending on the component you are using, you can also import the type that is associated with the component. For example, if you are using our HSL color picker component, you can also import the HSL type.

import { HslColorPicker, HslColor } from "react-colorful";

const myHslValue: HslColor = { h: 0, s: 0, l: 0 };

Take a look at Supported Color Models for more information about the types and color formats you may want to use.

Usage with Preact

react-colorful will work flawlessly with Preact out-of-the-box if you are using WMR, Preact-CLI, NextJS with Preact, or a few other tools/boilerplates thanks to aliasing.

If you are using another solution, please refer to the Aliasing React to Preact section of the Preact documentation.

Preact + Typescript

react-colorful, like all other React + TS projects, can potentially cause issues in a Preact + TS application if you have the @types/react package installed, either as a direct dependency or a dependency of a dependency. For example, the Preact TS template comes with @types/enzyme which has @types/react as a dependency.

To fix this, create a declaration.d.ts file or add to your existing:

import React from "react";

declare global {
    namespace React {
        interface ReactElement {
            nodeName: any;
            attributes: any;
            children: any;
        }
    }
}

This will correct the types and allow you to use react-colorful along with many other React + TS libraries in your Preact + TS application.

Browser Support

It would be an easier task to list all of the browsers and versions that react-colorful does not support! We regularly test against browser versions going all the way back to 2013 and this includes IE11.

react-colorful works out-of-the-box for most browsers, regardless of version, and only requires an Object.assign polyfill be provided for full IE11 support.

Why react-colorful?

Today each dependency drags more dependencies and increases your project’s bundle size uncontrollably. But size is very important for everything that intends to work in a browser.

react-colorful is a simple color picker for those who care about their bundle size and client-side performance. It is fast and lightweight because:

• has no dependencies (no risks in terms of vulnerabilities, no unexpected bundle size changes);
• built with hooks and functional components only (no classes and polyfills for them);
• ships only a minimal amount of manually optimized color conversion algorithms (while most of the popular pickers import entire color manipulation libraries that increase the bundle size by more than 10 KB and make your app slower).

To show you the problem that react-colorful is trying to solve, we have performed a simple benchmark (using bundlephobia.com) against popular React color picker libraries:

Name	Bundle size	Bundle size (gzip)	Dependencies
react-colorful
react-color
react-input-color
rc-color-picker

Projects using react-colorful

Storybook — the most widely used open-source tool for developing UI components

Resume.io — online resume builder with over 9,400,000 users worldwide

Wireflow.co — free tool for creating modern user flow prototypes

MagicPattern.design — unique geometric pattern generator

Viewst.com — online tool for designing, creating and automating ad campaigns

Omatsuri.app — progressive web application with a lot of different frontend focused tools

Leva — open source extensible GUI panel made for React

Composable — online tool for creating custom vector illustrations

Backers and sponsors

Ports

Not using React or Preact? Not a problem! Check out the list of react-colorful ports adapted to your favourite framework or technology of choice:

• vanilla-colorful — a react-colorful reimplementation in vanilla Custom Elements, generously ported by @web-padavan.

• angular-colorful — a react-colorful rewritten for use with the Angular framework, lovingly ported by @fil0157.

If your port is not in the list, reach us out via GitHub issues.

Changelog

5.6.1

• Update export settings to fix Jet 28 issues (via #191)