Case study

hexgrab: rebuilding a color picker from a REA study of PowerToys

hexgrab is a Windows WPF color picker built after a REA investigation of the shipped PowerToys Color Picker. The author documents findings from its .NET and native DLLs, including timer-based pixel sampling and clipboard retries, then implements a smaller picker with a global hotkey, screen overlay and HEX copying.

Targets: App · Binary
Category: Community REA investigations
Relationship: Author-reported mixed workflow
Sources reviewed: 2026-11-06
Evidence class: C2 code & docs, no demo or download

Stars: 5
Last commit: 2026-10-12
Language: C#
License (GitHub): MIT

GitHub data as of 2026-11-10

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Evidence

Observed: Code, documentation and a download method observed; no demo found.
Checked: 2026-11-08

How evidence classes are assigned

Requirements & limits

Prerequisites: Windows 10 or 11 x64; building from source requires the .NET 10 SDK.
Testing evidence: The author reports testing on one monitor at 125% scale; mixed-scale multi-monitor behavior remains untested on hardware.
Scope: The picker outputs HEX only.
License: MIT license.

Cite

BibTeX

@misc{hexgrab-case,
  title = {{hexgrab: rebuilding a color picker from a REA study of PowerToys}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/iammukeshm/hexgrab}},
  url = {https://github.com/iammukeshm/hexgrab},
  urldate = {2026-11-06},
  note = {Awesome REA entry: \url{https://awesomerea.org/resources/hexgrab-case/}}
}

Plain text

hexgrab: rebuilding a color picker from a REA study of PowerToys. https://github.com/iammukeshm/hexgrab (accessed 2026-11-06). Awesome REA entry: https://awesomerea.org/resources/hexgrab-case/

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Primary sources

docs/rea-findings.md GitHub · iammukeshm/hexgrab · Revision 511c580
README.md GitHub · iammukeshm/hexgrab · Revision 511c580