13 Chroma – Preferences

13 min read

Where you tune Chroma’s per-user editor settings: the named-color database, checkerboard cell size, and auto-open behavior, plus one-click maintenance actions for the color history and favorites strips.

Summary

Chroma’s user-facing settings are intentionally small. The tool’s defaults are picked to work well for the common case (Chroma Colors as the named database, 8-pixel checker cells, auto-open enabled), so most projects need to touch this page only when adopting a different named-color convention (e.g. RAL Classic for industrial design references) or when clearing stale color history during a teardown.

The asset-directory configuration is deliberately not on this page. Where palettes, gradients, and swatch collections land on disk is a project-level decision (it travels with the project, not with any single user’s editor settings), so it lives under Project Settings > Scylla alongside the other project-wide path settings. The Preferences page’s first widget is a HelpBox pointing at that location to keep the connection visible.

The maintenance buttons handle the EditorPrefs-backed state that does not have an obvious affordance elsewhere: the 32-entry color history strip and the 16-entry favorites strip. Clearing them here is the only “reset just this one thing” path; the window-level Reset action in the overflow menu clears everything transient at once.

  • Change the default named-color database used by the Color Editor name lookup, the Accessibility tab’s Nearest Named panel, and the Image Sampler extract auto-naming.
  • Tune the checkerboard cell size behind semi-transparent color previews for personal preference (smaller cells for fine alpha inspection, larger cells for less visual noise).
  • Toggle whether double-clicking a ColorPaletteAsset or ColorGradientAsset in the Project window opens Chroma.
  • Wipe the color history strip or the favorites strip without affecting any project assets.

Features

  • Color asset path HelpBox. A help message at the top of the page notes that the Color Directory, Palettes Subdirectory, and Gradients Subdirectory are configured in Project Settings > Scylla (not here), so demos, UI, and Chroma share a single source of truth. The defaults are Assets/Scylla/Resources/Color/, Palettes, and Gradients, which produces the full asset paths Assets/Scylla/Resources/Color/Palettes/ and Assets/Scylla/Resources/Color/Gradients/.
  • Named Color Database (Accessibility section). A dropdown offering the four built-in databases: Chroma Colors (866 curated entries, the default), CSS Color Module Level 4 (148 entries), X11 (CSS L4 superset), and RAL Classic (industrial paint standard subset). This setting is read by every named-color consumer in the tool unless that consumer overrides it locally (the Accessibility tab’s Nearest Named panel has its own per-panel override that re-syncs to this default on tab activation).
  • Checkerboard Size (Appearance section). A dropdown offering three sizes: 4 px (Small; best for inspecting fine-grained alpha edges), 8 px (Medium; the default; balances readability and visual noise), 16 px (Large; less visually busy, good for large preview swatches). Applies to every transparent-color preview surface in Chroma (color previews, gradient bars, swatch grids).
  • Auto-open on asset double-click (Behavior section). Toggle. When on (default), double-clicking a ColorPaletteAsset or ColorGradientAsset in the Project window opens it in Chroma (creating the window if it does not already exist). When off, double-click falls back to Unity’s default behavior (selecting the asset; the Inspector shows its property drawer).
  • Clear Color History (Maintenance section). Button. Wipes the 32-entry color history strip persisted in EditorPrefs. Takes effect immediately; the strip empties on the next paint of any Chroma window.
  • Clear Favorites (Maintenance section). Button. Wipes the 16-entry favorites strip persisted in EditorPrefs. Takes effect immediately.
  • Searchable. The page registers keywords chroma, color, palette, gradient, contrast, accessibility, wcag, oklab, oklch, named with Unity’s Preferences search, so typing any of those into the Preferences search field surfaces this page.
  • User-scoped. Every setting on this page is stored in EditorPrefs (per Unity account on the machine), not in the project. These settings follow the editor install, not the repository.

Recipes

Every recipe below stands on its own, covering one specific thing you might want to do with the Preferences page or the settings it controls. Jump straight to the one you need.

Open the Chroma Preferences page

Problem. You want to reach the Chroma Preferences page to change a setting, and the menu path is not obvious the first time.

Solution. From the Unity menu bar, choose Edit > Preferences… (macOS: Unity > Settings…, depending on your editor version), then select Scylla > Chroma in the left-hand category tree. The page renders with the HelpBox at the top, the three settings sections in the middle, and the Maintenance section at the bottom.

You can also reach the page by typing chroma, oklab (Oklab is the perceptual color space Chroma uses for nearest-named matching), wcag (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), named, or any of the other registered keywords into the Preferences search field at the top of the Preferences window. The category tree filters down to this page immediately.

Change the default named-color database

Problem. You want Chroma’s name lookups, the Accessibility tab’s Nearest Named panel, and the Image Sampler extract auto-naming to use a different reference set, such as RAL Classic for an industrial design project or CSS Color Module Level 4 (CSS L4) when your game targets web and you need names that match what a browser would call them.

Solution. Open the Preferences page and find the Named Color Database dropdown in the Accessibility section. The four built-in options are:

  • Chroma Colors. Includes 866 curated entries with descriptive names like “Cerulean Frost” or “Burnt Sienna”. It’s the default and usually the right choice, covering a wide perceptual span with names that read as colors first and identifiers second.
  • CSS Color Module Level 4. Includes 148 entries, the standard CSS palette plus its extensions. Choose it when the project produces CSS variables and the named values need to match what a browser would call them.
  • X11. Extends CSS L4 with the historic X Window System names, including numbered variants like Gray1-100. Choose it for matching documentation, design systems, or tools that predate CSS.
  • RAL Classic. Offers a representative subset of the industrial paint standard, with entries like “RAL 3020 Traffic red”. Choose it when designs need to map to physical paint, signage, or product colors.

Changing the dropdown takes effect immediately. Every named-color consumer in Chroma re-reads the preference on the next paint or tab activation. The Accessibility tab’s Nearest Named panel also re-syncs from this preference each time the tab is activated, so a change here propagates without reopening the Chroma window.

Tune the checkerboard cell size

Problem. The transparency checkerboard behind semi-transparent swatches and gradient previews is either too busy or too coarse for the kind of inspection work you do, and you want to adjust it.

Solution. Open the Preferences page and find the Checkerboard Size dropdown in the Appearance section. Three sizes are available:

  • Small (4 px). Works best for inspecting fine alpha edges on small swatches, where every partially-transparent pixel needs to read clearly.
  • Medium (8 px). The default. Reads cleanly on swatches of any size without being visually busy.
  • Large (16 px). Stays less visually busy on large preview surfaces, which helps when you’re working with the gradient bar or full-width gradient previews and the checker pattern itself would otherwise become a distraction.

The change applies immediately to every open Chroma window. This is purely a visual preference with no functional impact on color values, export, or any other behavior.

Toggle auto-open on asset double-click

Problem. When you double-click a ColorPaletteAsset or ColorGradientAsset in the Project window, you want to control whether it opens in Chroma automatically or falls back to Unity’s default behavior.

Solution. Open the Preferences page and find the Auto-open on asset double-click toggle in the Behavior section.

  • On (default). The asset opens in Chroma. If the Chroma window is not open, it is created and brought into focus. If the window is already open, it switches to the asset’s tab and loads the asset.
  • Off. Unity’s default double-click handler fires, selecting the asset and showing its property drawer in the Inspector. You can still open the asset in Chroma via the Open in Chroma button on the property drawer, or by dragging it into the Library sidebar.

Leave the toggle on for the common case: whatever tool authored the asset is usually the right one to edit it in. Turn it off when you are working in a project that expects double-click to route to something else, such as a project-specific palette inspector or an asset-reference jump.

Clear the color history or the favorites strip

Problem. You are switching to a new project or wrapping up a session, and the color history or favorites strip is full of colors from previous work that you do not want to carry forward. You want to wipe just those strips without affecting any project assets.

Solution. Open the Preferences page and find the two buttons in the Maintenance section:

  • Clear Color History. Wipes the 32-entry color history strip stored in EditorPrefs. The strip empties on the next paint of any Chroma window.
  • Clear Favorites. Wipes the 16-entry favorites strip stored in EditorPrefs. Same behavior.

Both buttons act immediately and do not show a confirmation dialog. The wipe is irreversible in the sense that the EditorPrefs entries are overwritten, but the strips re-populate naturally through normal use, so the cost of an accidental click is only losing whatever you had accumulated.

The HelpBox below the buttons confirms that history and favorites live in EditorPrefs and survive Unity restarts. They are user-scoped (not project-scoped), which is why colors from a previous project carry across sessions unless you clear them.

Find or change the color asset save paths

Problem. You want to know where new palettes and gradients will be saved when you create them, or you need to change those paths for the whole team.

Solution. The Preferences page does not edit the color asset paths – that is intentional. Asset paths are a project-level decision (everyone on the team needs the same paths to share assets), so they live in Project Settings > Scylla rather than in user-scoped EditorPrefs. The HelpBox at the top of the Preferences page restates this and points you there.

To view or change the paths, open Edit > Project Settings…, select Scylla in the left-hand category tree, and edit:

  • Color Directory. Sets the root folder for color assets. Default: Assets/Scylla/Resources/Color/.
  • Palettes Subdirectory. Sets the subfolder under the root for palettes. Default: Palettes. Full default path: Assets/Scylla/Resources/Color/Palettes/.
  • Gradients Subdirectory. Sets the subfolder under the root for gradients. Default: Gradients. Full default path: Assets/Scylla/Resources/Color/Gradients/.

These settings are project-scoped (they ship in ProjectSettings/ alongside other Unity project configuration), so every team member gets the same paths automatically. Editing them affects newly created assets only; existing assets stay where they were saved. The Factory Assets action (window overflow menu > Create Factory Assets) also reads these paths, so changing them moves the destination of the bundled-asset generator.

Review what Chroma remembers between sessions

Problem. You want to understand what state Chroma saves and restores automatically across sessions, and how to reset it when you need a fresh start.

Solution. The Preferences page does not expose window-state persistence, but Chroma stores a generous amount of it in EditorPrefs across sessions:

  • Window rect. Remembers the size and position of the Chroma window and restores them on the next open.
  • Active tab. Remembers which tab was active when the window was last closed.
  • Loaded palette and gradient. Both are tracked by AssetDatabase GUID, so renames in the Project window don’t break the link, and resolve cleanly to “no asset” when a GUID no longer exists.
  • Library sidebar’s active tab. Remembers whether Palettes, Gradients, or Swatches was last selected.
  • Active and previous colors. Tracks the New/Old swatch pair in the color preview strip.
  • Color editor view mode (Wheel, HSV Square, RGB Cube, LCh Plane), the Slice axis (when RGB Cube is selected), and the Input mode (Integer, Float) are all remembered.
  • Theory tab base color. Persists independently of the global active color, so Theory exploration doesn’t leak into the recent-color history.
  • Bake dialog field values. Width, Height, Orientation, Format, and Linear Color Space all persist across invocations.
  • Mixer slider position and last colors. Both persist across sessions.

To reset all of the above at once, use the Reset action in the window’s overflow menu (three-dot menu at the top-right of the Chroma window). This restores Chroma to a near-first-run state without touching any project assets or the Preferences-page settings. The Preferences-page Maintenance buttons only clear the history and favorites strips; the window’s other transient state is reset only via the window Reset action.

Tips and pitfalls

  • Asset paths live outside this page, deliberately. They’re a project-level decision (everyone on the team needs the same paths to share assets), so Project Settings > Scylla holds them instead. The HelpBox at the top of the page points there.
  • All settings on this page are user-scoped. They travel with the Unity user account via EditorPrefs, not with the project repository. A teammate opening the same project sees their own settings, not the original author’s.
  • The Auto-open toggle changes Unity’s [OnOpenAsset] behavior. When the toggle is off, Unity’s default double-click handler fires (which selects the asset). When on, Chroma’s handler intercepts and routes the open to the Chroma window. Toggling does not require a restart; the change takes effect on the next double-click.
  • The Clear Color History and Clear Favorites buttons do not warn before they act. Clicking one wipes the strip on the spot. Nothing is lost for good: normal use refills both strips over time, so an accidental click only costs you whatever colors you’d accumulated.
  • The Named Color Database choice affects more than the Color tab’s Name field. It also drives the Accessibility tab’s Nearest Named panel default, the Image Sampler extract auto-naming, the Palette tab’s swatch auto-naming on Add, and the multi-space readout’s Nearest Named row.
  • The Accessibility tab’s Nearest Named dropdown can override this preference temporarily. The override applies to that one panel until the tab is re-activated (which re-syncs from this preference) or until the window-overflow Reset is invoked. The preference itself is not touched by the override.
  • The Checkerboard Size choice is purely visual. It has no functional or performance impact. The checker rendering is a single procedural draw regardless of cell size.
  • The caps on color history (32 entries) and favorites (16 entries) are not editable. The numbers are fixed in code. For project-shared reference color collections beyond those caps, use a ColorSwatchCollectionAsset (accessible via the Library sidebar’s Swatches sub-tab), which has no fixed size limit and lives in the project rather than in EditorPrefs.
  • Nothing on the Preferences page resets the Chroma window’s own state. That job belongs to the Reset action in the window’s overflow menu. The Maintenance buttons here reach only the EditorPrefs-backed history and favorites; everything else the window remembers (rect, active tab, loaded assets, picker mode, etc.) waits for that overflow-menu Reset action.
  • Search keywords cover the common entry points. Typing wcag, oklab, oklch, or named into the Preferences search field surfaces this page even though the page does not directly expose those concepts as settings, because the Accessibility tab consumes them and the page is tagged with their keywords.
  • The HelpBox at the bottom is a reminder, not a setting. The text below the Maintenance buttons is a reminder that the cleared state lives in EditorPrefs and is independent of project assets. It is not interactive.
Updated on October 7, 2026