colorful-mode

Preview any color in your buffer in real time.

🎨 colorful-mode is a minor mode that allow you highlight/preview any color format such as color hex and color names, in your current buffer in real time and in a user friendly way based/inspired on 🌈rainbow-mode.el.

Features ✨

• Real time color highlight.
• Supports:
  • Hexadecimal (#RRGGBB, #RGB, #RRGGBBAA, #RGBA).
  • Color names (Emacs, HTML, CSS).
  • CSS rgb/rgba, hsl/hsla and user-defined colors variables:
    • @define_color
    • var()
  • LaTex colors (gray, rbg, RGB, HTML)
• Convert current color at point or in region to other formats such as hexadecimal or color names (only available for some colors) with mouse click support.
• Prefix/suffix string instead highlight (Optional).
• Highlight only in strings (Optional).
• Blacklist color keywords from being highlighted.

Screenshots and animated GIFs 📷

Supports for both GUI/TUI.

Support for custom color string indicator.

Change color support in real time.

Support for color changing at region.

User Options 🔧

Customizable User options

• colorful-allow-mouse-clicks (default: t) If non-nil, allow using mouse buttons for change color.
• colorful-use-prefix (default: nil) If non-nil, use prefix for preview color instead highlight them.

⛔ WARNING: CSS-DERIVED MODES COLORIZE RGB AND HEX COLORS OUT THE BOX,
THIS MAY INTERFERE WITH COLORFUL PREFIX, YOU CAN DISABLE THIS SETTING
`css-fontify-colors' TO nil

• colorful-prefix-string (default: "●") String to be used in highlights. Only relevant if `colorful-use-prefix’ is non-nil.
• colorful-prefix-alignment (default: 'left) The position to put prefix string. The value can be left or right. Only relevant if `colorful-use-prefix’ is non-nil.
• colorful-extra-color-keyword-functions default: ‘(colorful-add-hex-colors (emacs-lisp-mode . colorful-add-color-names) ((html-mode css-mode) . (colorful-add-css-variables-colors colorful-add-rgb-colors colorful-add-hsl-colors colorful-add-color-names)) (latex-mode . colorful-add-latex-colors)) List of functions to add extra color keywords to colorful-color-keywords.

  It can be a cons cell specifying the mode (or a list of modes) e.g:

  (((css-mode css-ts-mode) . colorful-add-rgb-colors) (emacs-lisp-mode . (colorful-add-color-names colorful-add-rgb-colors)) ((text-mode html-mode) . (colorful-add-color-names colorful-add-rgb-colors)) …)

  Or a simple list of functions for executing wherever colorful is active: (colorful-add-color-names colorful-add-rgb-colors)

  Available functions are:

  • colorful-add-hex-colors.
  • colorful-add-color-names.
  • colorful-add-css-variables-colors.
  • colorful-add-rgb-colors.
  • colorful-add-hsl-colors.
  • colorful-add-latex-colors
• colorful-exclude-colors (default: '("#define")) List of keyword to don’t highlight.
• colorful-short-hex-conversions (default: t) If non-nil, hex values converted by colorful should be as short as possible. Setting this to 2 will make hex values follow a 24-bit specification (#RRGGBB[AA]) and can make them inaccurate.
• colorful-only-strings (default: nil) If non-nil colorful will only highlight colors inside strings. If set to only-prog, only highlight colors in strings if current major mode is derived from prog-mode.
• global-colorful-modes (default: '(mhtml-mode html-ts-mode scss-mode css-mode css-ts-mode prog-mode)) Which major modes global-colorful-mode is switched on in (globally).

Faces

• colorful-base Face used as base for highlight color names. Changing background or foreground color will have no effect.

Interactive User Functions.

• colorful-change-or-copy-color Change or copy color to a converted format at current cursor position.
• colorful-convert-and-change-color Convert color to other format and replace color at point or active mark. If mark is active, convert colors in mark.
• colorful-convert-and-copy-color Convert color to an other and copy it at point.
• colorful-mode Buffer-local minor mode.
• global-colorful-mode Global minor mode.

Key bindings

These key bindings are defined by: colorful-mode-map

• C-x c x → colorful-change-or-copy-color.
• C-x c c → colorful-convert-and-copy-color.
• C-x c r → colorful-convert-and-change-color.

Setups and Guides 📖

Enabling colors to specifics major-modes

If you want to use css rgb colors outside css-derived modes, you can add them to `colorful-extra-color-keyword-functions’ in your config.

(add-to-list 'colorful-extra-color-keyword-functions '(insert-your-major-mode . colorful-add-rgb-colors))

If you want also use hsl and rgb together you can use this

(add-to-list 'colorful-extra-color-keyword-functions '(insert-your-major-mode . (colorful-add-rgb-colors colorful-add-hsl-colors)))

colorful provides extra functions out-the-box that enable additional highlighting:

• colorful-add-hex-colors: Add Hexadecimal Colors.
• colorful-add-color-names: Add color names.
• colorful-add-css-variables-colors: Add CSS user-defined color variables.
• colorful-add-rgb-colors: Add CSS RGB colors.
• colorful-add-hsl-colors: Add CSS HSL colors.
• colorful-add-latex-colors: Add LaTex rgb/RGB/HTML/Grey colors.

See: colorful-extra-color-keyword-functions for more details.

Usage and Installation 📦

It’s recommended that you must use emacs-28.x or higher.

For install colorful run:

• M-x package-install colorful-mode

Once you have it installed you can activate colorful locally in your buffer with M-x colorful-mode, if want enable it globally without using hooks then you can do M-x global-colorful-mode

Or if you prefer using use-package macro:

(use-package colorful-mode
  :ensure t ; Optional
  :hook (prog-mode text-mode)
  ;; :config (global-colorful-mode) ; Enable it globally
  ...)

How does it compare to rainbow-mode or built-in css fontify colors?

colorful-mode improves rainbow-mode and css-fontify-colors in adding more features:

Comparation	colorful-mode.el	rainbow-mode.el	built-in css-fontify-colors
Compatible with hl-line and other overlays?	✓	❌	❌
Convert color to other formats?	✓	❌	❌
Optionally use string prefix/suffix instead highlight	✓	❌	❌
Blacklist colors?	✓	❌1	❌
Allow highlight specifics colors in specific modes	✓	✓2	❌
Optionally highlight only in strings	✓	❌	❌
No performance issues?3	❌	✓	✓

[1] rainbow-mode (like colorful) uses regex for highlight some
    keywords, however it cannot exclude specifics colors keywords
    (such as "#def" that overrides C "#define" keyword).
[2] Only for some colors.
[3] I didn't a benchmark however due colorful-mode uses overlays
    instead text properties it can be a bit slow.

The intention is to provide a featured alternative to rainbow-mode.el and css-fontify-colors with a user-friendly approach.

If you prefer only highlights without color conversion, prefix/suffix string indicator and/or anything else you can use rainbow-mode.el.

or something built-in and just for css then use built-in css-fontify-colors which is activated by default

On the other hand, if you want convert colors, overlays, optional prefix strings and more features you can use colorful-mode.el.

How to Contribute

colorful-mode is part of GNU ELPA, if you want send patches you will need assign copyright to the Free Software Foundation. Please see the CONTRIBUTING.org file for getting more information.