Reliable Color Picker Across Windows & External Apps

Feature Request: Reliable Color Picker Across Windows & External Apps

Right now in Affinity Photo 3, the Color Picker only works consistently inside a single document window. If I have two Affinity windows open, or if I try to sample from an external app like PurRef or even the desktop, the picker often reverts to white/black instead of grabbing the intended color.

It would be a huge workflow improvement if the Color Picker could:

• Sample colors reliably across multiple Affinity document windows.
• Capture pixels from external apps (PurRef, browsers, desktop) when macOS screen recording permissions are enabled.
• Clearly indicate which swatch (Primary vs Secondary) is active when sampling.

This would make multi‑document and reference‑board workflows much smoother for digital artists, without needing screenshots or workarounds.
Where do I post feature requests? I love this forum.

Quote from smadell

While the color picker tool has never been able to do this, the color picker within the Color panel can (and, to the best of my knowledge, has always been able to). See my attached video.

Reverts to white. Same as the 2 dozen workarounds I tried, and 3/4 hour I spent with Copilot before it too decided outside color picking couldn't be done ' ). smadell appreciate the attempt. You're a good colleague.