react-colorful vs react-color
React Color Picker Libraries Comparison
1 Year
react-colorfulreact-color
What's React Color Picker Libraries?

Both react-color and react-colorful are libraries designed to provide color picking functionalities in React applications. They allow developers to integrate color selection features easily, enhancing user experience in applications that require color customization, such as design tools, image editors, and more. While both libraries serve the same fundamental purpose, they differ in terms of features, performance, and design philosophy, catering to different developer needs and preferences.

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react-colorful3,481,1133,323391 kB41-MIT
react-color1,427,47312,165-2335 years agoMIT
Feature Comparison: react-colorful vs react-color

Performance

  • react-colorful:

    react-colorful is designed to be lightweight and performant, making it a great choice for applications where speed is essential. Its minimalistic approach ensures quick rendering and responsiveness, even with multiple instances.

  • react-color:

    react-color is relatively heavier due to its extensive feature set, which may impact performance in applications with many color pickers or complex UI. However, it is optimized for usability and provides a rich user experience.

Customization

  • react-colorful:

    react-colorful provides basic customization options, focusing on simplicity. While it may not offer as many customization features as react-color, it allows for straightforward styling to fit within most UI designs.

  • react-color:

    react-color offers extensive customization options, allowing developers to tweak styles, layouts, and behaviors of the color pickers. This flexibility is beneficial for applications that require a unique look and feel.

Ease of Use

  • react-colorful:

    react-colorful is designed with simplicity in mind, making it easy to integrate and use. Its straightforward API allows developers to quickly implement color picking functionality without extensive setup.

  • react-color:

    react-color has a steeper learning curve due to its numerous features and options. Developers may need to spend more time understanding the API and available components to fully utilize its capabilities.

Color Formats

  • react-colorful:

    react-colorful primarily focuses on HEX and RGB formats, which may suffice for many applications but could limit flexibility for those needing advanced color formats.

  • react-color:

    react-color supports a wide range of color formats, including HEX, RGB, HSL, and more. This versatility is crucial for applications that require different color representations and conversions.

Community and Support

  • react-colorful:

    react-colorful, while growing in popularity, has a smaller community. However, it is well-documented, and the simplicity of the library makes it easy to find solutions to common issues.

  • react-color:

    react-color has a larger community and more extensive documentation, providing ample resources for troubleshooting and learning. This can be beneficial for developers seeking support or examples.

How to Choose: react-colorful vs react-color
  • react-colorful:

    Choose react-colorful if you prefer a lightweight, performant solution that focuses on simplicity and ease of use. It is ideal for projects where performance is critical, and you want a straightforward color picker without the overhead of additional features.

  • react-color:

    Choose react-color if you need a more feature-rich color picker with a variety of color formats and a wide range of built-in color pickers. It offers a comprehensive set of options for customization and is suitable for projects that require extensive color selection capabilities.

README for react-colorful
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

Table of Contents

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

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 Storybook
Resume.io — online resume builder with over 9,400,000 users worldwide resume.io
Wireflow.co — free tool for creating modern user flow prototypes wireflow.co
MagicPattern.design — unique geometric pattern generator magicpattern.design
Viewst.com — online tool for designing, creating and automating ad campaigns viewst.com
Omatsuri.app — progressive web application with a lot of different frontend focused tools omatsuri.app
Leva — open source extensible GUI panel made for React pmndrs/leva
Composable — online tool for creating custom vector illustrations composable.art

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:

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