The color picker palette: customize the colors you can pick

Whenever you set a color in SimplyPrint, like tagging a file with the material it needs, assigning a color in the slicer, or describing a spool, you use the same color picker. The color picker palette settings let you decide exactly which colors that picker offers: keep the standard set, build your own list, or limit it to colors you actually have. You can also pull real colors straight from the filament database, a printer, or a file, so nobody has to know a hex code.

This guide covers the palette modes, custom colors, the color sources, the option to lock the picker for your whole account, and how schools use it to keep a classroom on an approved set of colors.

Table of contents

• Where to find it
• Choosing which colors the picker offers
• Creating your own custom colors
• Getting a color from filament, printers, or files
• Importing colors into your palette
• Locking the picker to your palette
• Keeping auto-tagged colors on your palette
• Locking colors for a classroom
• Who can change these settings

Where to find it

Open your account settings and go to the Tagging tab. The Colors section holds everything in this guide: the palette mode, the lock options, and your custom colors.

The settings here change what the color picker shows wherever you pick a color. The one exception is adding a spool to your filament inventory, where the full set of colors is always available so you can record any spool you own.

Choosing which colors the picker offers

The Color picker palette option decides where the picker's colors come from. Pick the one that matches how your team works.

The three inventory-based modes (filament inventory, loaded filament, loaded color tags) read from your spools and printers, so they only make sense if you track filament in SimplyPrint. When you have a material type selected, they narrow the list to matching colors: a generic type like PLA shows matching spools across every brand, while a branded type like Bambu Lab PLA Basic shows only spools of that exact material.

Creating your own custom colors

Custom colors are your own named colors, shown in the picker alongside (or instead of) the standard set. They are useful when you want consistent names like "Workshop black" or "School blue" instead of raw hex codes.

In the Custom colors section:

1. Click Add color.
2. Pick the color with the swatch, and give it a name.
3. Optionally restrict it to a material type using the dropdown.
4. Click Save custom colors.

Restricting a color to a material type controls when it appears. Restricting to a generic type (for example PLA) shows the color for any brand of that material, while a branded type shows it only for that exact material. Leave the material type empty to always show the color.

Getting a color from filament, printers, or files

Most people do not think in hex codes, and printers often report colors that SimplyPrint has no name for. The Get color from... picker solves both. Wherever you pick a color, look for the Get color from... link under the swatches. It opens a window with three sources:

• Filament database - choose a brand, then a material (for example Bambu Lab, then PLA Basic), and see that material's real colors. These come from the Open Filament Database, a community-maintained list of brand colors. Click a swatch to use it.
• A printer - choose one of your printers and see the colors currently set on its material slots, including colors the printer reported itself that do not have a name yet. This is the easiest way to capture an exact hex a printer sent.
• A file - choose a file and see the colors it carries: the colors it is tagged with, plus the raw colors detected inside the file by gcode analysis (handy for multi-color prints, where the colors usually have no name).

Pick a color from any source and it is applied right away.

Importing colors into your palette

The same three sources can fill your custom palette in bulk. In the Custom colors section, click Import colors to open the picker in multi-select mode.

1. Switch between the Filament database, A printer, and A file tabs.
2. Click swatches to select them. Your selection is kept as you move between tabs, so you can gather colors from more than one source at once.
3. The colors you have chosen appear at the bottom. Click any of them to remove it from the selection.
4. Click Add colors to add them to your list, then Save custom colors.

Colors already in your palette are skipped automatically, so importing the same material twice will not create duplicates.

When importing from the filament database, you can tick Associate imported colors with [material] to tag every imported color with that material type. If your account does not yet have a profile for that material, SimplyPrint offers to add one so the colors can be linked to it.

Locking the picker to your palette

By default, anyone can still add a one-off color with the standard color picker. If you want your team to only use approved colors, turn on Lock selection to the palette.

With the lock on, the "add custom color" option is removed, so people can only pick from the colors you offer. An item that already has a color keeps showing it even if it is not in the palette, so you never lose existing data, but new off-palette colors cannot be added.

Keeping auto-tagged colors on your palette

When SimplyPrint auto-tags an uploaded file with the colors it detects, those detected colors can be anything the file contains. If you are using a restricted palette mode and want auto-tagging to respect it, turn on Don't auto-tag colors outside the palette.

With this on, auto-tagging still tags the material type, but it drops any detected color that is not in your palette instead of applying an off-palette color. This option appears once you choose a palette mode other than "Standard palette".

Locking colors for a classroom

Schools often want every student to pick from the same short, approved set of colors, so tags stay consistent and nobody invents a one-off shade. The palette settings make that easy:

1. Set the Color picker palette to Custom palette only and add your approved classroom colors, or use one of the inventory modes if you want students limited to filament you actually stock.
2. Turn on Lock selection to the palette so students cannot add a color of their own.
3. Leave the Pick colors outside the locked palette permission granted to teachers and admins, so staff keep full color freedom while students stay on the approved set.

The result is a picker that shows students only the colors you chose, while teachers can still pick anything when they need to.

Who can change these settings

The palette mode and the lock options are account settings, so they are changed by an admin. Managing the custom color list needs the filament settings permission.

One permission controls who the lock applies to:

• Pick colors outside the locked palette - lets a role ignore the lock and pick any color. Account owners and admins have it by default.

Turn the lock on to restrict your team, then grant this permission to any role that should still have full color freedom, for example teachers in a classroom while students stay on the approved palette.

Related articles

• All about the Tags feature
• The Filament Manager feature: track, organize and manage your filament inventory
• Material profiles: what they are, and what they are not
• The Open Filament Database: contributing and using preset data
• How to assign colors and filament slots to a model
• Organization slicer settings: account-wide slicing defaults

Updated on: 26/06/2026