IE-R is a color picker and daemon for Linux. It lives in your system tray, activates via hotkey, and puts the color under your cursor into your clipboard instantly.
This is the resurrection of the original "Instant Eyedropper" tool, which has served users for over 20 years. Now it's a native Wayland app written from scratch in Rust. Same idea — but with everything users asked for over two decades finally built in.
But there's more to the tactical workflow:
| Input Device | Resolution & Behavior |
|---|---|
| LMB / Enter | Pick color under cursor and copy to clipboard |
| MMB / Space | Add color to stash deck without closing overlay |
| Scroll | Adjust the zoom level |
| ↑ ↓ ← → | Pixel-perfect nudge (1px grid targeting) |
| Shift + Arrows | Jump to the next distinct color |
| Alt + Scroll | Modify the sampling area size |
| Shift + Scroll | Adjust magnifier size |
| Ctrl + Scroll | Adjust font size |
| 1 ... 0 | Hot-swap string format templates on the fly |
| ~ | Show/Hide Head-Up-Display (HUD) with tooltips |
| Esc / RMB | Cancel and close overlay |
- MULTI-MONITOR — Any number of screens, mixed resolutions, fractional scaling (e.g. 1.25x)
- HIDPI NATIVE — Direct access to the physical pixel grid without interpolation or scaling artifacts.
- STASH DECK — Unlimited sequential picks, accumulated in a stack
- PRECISION CONTROL — 1px targeting for exact color isolation on high-density grids
- HYPER JUMP — Intelligent boundary detection that navigates to the next distinct color
- DYNAMIC APERTURE — Fluid adjustment of the zoom level to maintain focus on fine details
- AREA SAMPLING — Regional color extraction with averaging for textured or noisy screen surfaces
- COLOR FORMATS — 10 standard templates and fully customizable string generation
- RUNTIME TWEAKS — Adjust magnifier and font size on the fly
- HOTKEYS — System-wide activation, configurable global shortcuts or UNIX signals
- CONFIG ENGINE — Single TOML file. Preserves comments on save
- SYSTEM TRAY — Color history, format selection, and config access
IE-R talks directly to Wayland protocols with zero GPU overhead. Capture efficiency is tiered based on your compositor capabilities:
Deployment options for the current development phase:
NIX (FLAKES) // RECOMMENDED
To install permanently into your profile:
ARCH LINUX (AUR)
The PKGBUILD installs the binary, .desktop file, and icon to standard system paths. KWin authorization works out of the box.
PORTABLE BUNDLE
Download latest .zip from Releases, then run integration script:
postinstall.sh installs the .desktop file and icon into ~/.local/share/, offers to add IE-R to autostart, and authorizes fast capture on KWin. The bundle is self-contained — it ships its own libraries and runs on any x86_64 Linux.
SOURCE BUILD
Requires Rust 1.80+ and wayland-client, libxkbcommon, pipewire, dbus, fontconfig.
Run the binary:
If you build from source, you'll need to install the .desktop file and icon manually — see Post-install below.
KDE PLASMA: ENABLING FAST CAPTURE
KWin ScreenShot2 requires a .desktop file with a special key to authorize direct capture. Without it, IE-R falls back to slow XDG Portal (~500ms). For manual builds:
SYSTEM ICON
WAYLAND HOTKEY INTEGRATION
Wayland blocks global input capture. Bind these commands to your compositor shortcuts to trigger the daemon:
Hyprland (hyprland.conf):
Sway (config):
AUTOSTART
To launch IE-R automatically on login:
CONFIGURATION FILE
All settings (colors, physics, hotkeys) are stored in a single TOML file that preserves your comments:
LICENSE & SOURCE
IE-R is source-available. Free for individuals and small organizations. Commercial use requires a paid license. Full source code available on GitHub.