Icons 25 Gets a Splash of Color… Names

In Icons 25, I’ve added a fun little upgrade that’s all about making colors a bit more human. You know how we always end up picking a hex like #770000 and thinking… “hmm… that’s red, right? Or maybe maroon?” 🤔

Well, now when you pick a foreground or background color in Icons, it’ll tell you the name of that color — thanks to a clever little custom connector to ColorNames.org. It’s like your color picker just got a tiny voice that says: “Hey, that’s Forest Green!” 🌲💚

🧠 Why Bother?

Honestly, this started as a “wouldn’t it be cool if…” kind of idea. But the more I played with it, the more useful it became.

It helps you actually know what color you’re picking (no more guessing).
It makes it easier to talk about colors with others. “Hey, let’s use Seafoam Green” sounds way better than “that one hex that starts with #9E…”
And most importantly… it’s just kinda fun! 🎉

⚙️ How It Works (Nerd Corner)

Here’s the deal:

You pick a color in Icons.
The app sends the hex (like ff0000) to the ColorNames.org API.
It sends back the closest matching name — like “Red” or “Sunset Orange.”
That name appears right under the color picker, next to the hex.

Boom. Simple as that.

If there’s no close match, it just doesn’t show anything. No errors, no fuss.

🔌 Under the Hood: The Custom Connector

Built a quick custom connector in Power Apps that does:

GET https://colornames.org/search/json?hex=yourhexhere

And it returns:

{
  "hex": "228b22",
  "name": "Forest Green",
  "exactMatchName": true
}

In the app, I just grab .name and plop it below the color picker. That’s it. 😎

🖼️ What It Looks Like

Let’s say you pick a color…

#FF0000 → Red
#228B22 → Forest Green
#FFD700 → Gold

It’s instant, it’s smooth, and honestly makes picking colors feel that little bit more personal.

🏁 Final Thoughts

This isn’t some massive game-changing feature—but it is a nice little quality-of-life upgrade that makes Icons feel more polished and more fun.

If you’ve already got Icons 25, it’s live now—just pick a color and look below the picker! If not, maybe now’s the time to give Icons a spin.

Let me know what you think — and if you discover a weird or wonderful color name, definitely send it my way. I’m collecting favourites. 🎨✨

—

Pen
maker of stuff, fan of color names like “Kermit Green” and “Banana Mania” 🍌