Pinwheel version history

1.8.3

19 November 2025

• Added the ability to set a custom pass threshold for WCAG contrast testing.

1.8.2

18 November 2025

• Design Tokens JSON export will now include any parent groups items are in, even if those groups aren’t in the build group.
• Fixed search not working in table view modes.
• Fixed an issue where the fallback hex value in a Design Tokens JSON file was being exported as 8 characters instead of 6.
• Fixed an issue where empty color sets could be exported in some cases.

1.8.1

12 November 2025

• Fixed an issue where toast messages could appear under the color proofing icon.

1.8.0

3 November 2025

• Added a Color Proofing feature, available from the view menu. You can now easily simulate what your colors will look like for various ocular conditions as well as seeing which colors fall outside of sRGB or P3.
• Fixed some performance issues when navigating the table view with a keyboard.

1.7.4

15 October 2025

• Fixed a bug where editing build task details could be slow and cause the project to refresh a lot.

1.7.3

10 October 2025

• Fixed an issue that was causing the welcome window to be really tall, and not resizable.

1.7.2

9 October 2025

• Improved the way Pinwheel handles large names, and also added an option for where you'd like them truncated.
• Small quality of life improvement to exported SwiftUI Color strings: Alpha is not included anymore if it’s 1 (since that’s the default).
• Fixed a crash that could occur during a Figma document import.

1.7.1

18 September 2025

• Fixed an issue where renaming the build groups and tasks k e p t   l o s i n g   f o c u s.

1.7

16 September 2025

• Added a shiny new icon for you brave people installing macOS 26 Tahoe today.
• Fixed other small Tahoe related things.
• Fixed various issues that could cause the UI to not update when you undo changes.

1.6.1

25 August 2025

• Added sRGB, sRGB Extended, and Display P3 copy color menus.
• Improved the popup button text style.
• Fixed a bug where aliases could appear to have no source after duplication.
• Fixed a license activation bug.

1.6

21 July 2025

• Added an option for a build task to be able to set the color space that should be exported to as part of that task. You can use this to export the same colors to different platforms in different color spaces and have Pinwheel handle all the conversion for you.
• Added a new Color Format property to colors. Now you can explicitly set which format you'd like to see and edit a color in.

1.5.6

3 July 2025

• Added Android Compose as an option in the color picker.
• Added a new custom formatter colorAsAndroidComposeColor for those of you making your own templates and wanting Android support.
• Fixed the Android Compose export task, it now correctly adds color space information for all colors.

1.5.5

26 June 2025

• Fixed an issue where the color format selected in the color picker could get reset between selections.
• Fixed an issue that could cause the color space to be incorrectly exported in some build tasks.

1.5.4

4 June 2025

• Added additional information to the table view to match the grid view. Which one is your favourite and why is it the table view?

1.5.3

23 April 2025

• Updated Design Token JSON import and export to match the latest DTCG specification.

1.5.2

10 April 2025

• Added another view mode called big table. It's like the table mode, but EMBIGENNED.
• Fixed a bug where the color converter window color picker would stop updating. Now Peter Piper can pick a pack of pickled pickers precisely again.
• Fixed an issue where fine scrubbing on the color picker sliders could launch the poor little color dot to the mooooon.

1.5.1

24 March 2025

• Improved shadow exporting to CSS, SCSS, and LESS. “0px” values now export as “0”.
• Improved Demo Design System example document by adding a shadow set and name processing for build tasks.
• Fixed exporting prefix and suffix name processing. It now actually adds prefixes and suffixes.

1.5

21 March 2025

• Added support for shadows, shadow sets, and shadow aliases to Pinwheel.
• Added support for importing shadows from Design Token JSON. We have also updated our Figma plugin to import and export shadows to and from Figma.
• Added Apple iOS and macOS system colors example document, with full support for light mode, dark mode, and high contrast.
• Added Tailwind version 4 colors example document.
• Added an example document with some nice, dusty colors.
• Improved color interpolation for auto generated 3 color sets.
• Fixed some small issues with how OKLAB and OKLCH colors are imported and exported.
• Fixed an issue where dragging past the bottom of the color picker would cause it to stop, well, picking colors.

1.4.2

27 February 2025

• Added OKLCH and OKLAB as formats you can use in the color picker and copy colors as. Note that these are only available for Display P3 and sRGB Extended, because they need a wide gamut color space to be represented properly.
• There is now an indicator on grid tiles if the color preview being shown has been clipped because the format you've chosen (for example hex) results in the color needing to be clipped. But also, it's time to move away from hex. Only 256 choices?! What is this, 1995?!
• Improved how the CSS importer imports color sets.
• Fixed some issues with selection when you delete an item.
• Fixed issues that could cause exported Swift Enums to not be able to compile.

1.4.1

24 February 2025

• Added the ability to sort manually named color sets by name.
• Improved the order and design of the new toolbar buttons.
• Fixed an issue that could cause Pinwheel to warn you that your license was expired when it wasn’t.

1.4

20 February 2025

• Added curve control for automatic color sets. You can now adjust the algorithm used to interpolate between each color to your hearts content.
• Added uchũ example document.
• Added toolbar buttons for changing the preview appearance as well as switching between grid and table views.
• Improved CSS import. Now if there are colors in your CSS file that look like a color set, Pinwheel will automatically turn them into one.
• Improved the custom template codeSafeName formatting to now generate even better, well, code safe variable names.
• Fixed spacing issues in various exports.

1.3.6

14 February 2025

• Design Token JSON imports will now import with their keys sorted, so that they import the same way every time (useful for those doing CLI imports).

1.3.5

14 February 2025

• Fixed an issue where builds with custom templates would fail if the custom template location contained spaces.
• Made asset catalog JSON files keys deterministic so that they play nicer with source control.

1.3.4

12 February 2025

• Added a new option for CSS exports. You can now choose whether to generate individual colors for appearances, or use the CSS light-dark() function. This is also available for custom templates.
• Fixed an issue that could cause colors and color sets to not update when using the color picker.

1.3.3

6 February 2025

• Fixed another issue that could stop command line builds from completing.

1.3.2

6 February 2025

• Added a new codeSafeEnum formatter for custom templates and upgraded our swift based build exports to use it.
• Fixed an issue that could cause some command line builds to fail.
• Fixed an issue where having an alias to a color set step would sometimes show information about the entire color set.
• Fixed some QuickLook color and readability issues.

1.3.1

4 February 2025

• Added a quick way to export Design Token JSON without needing to set up a build process.
• Small tweaks to layout and menu items.

1.3

29 January 2025

• Added strings. You can now add these to Pinwheel and export them in lots of different formats, including into Figma using our plugin.
• Added support for strings when importing Design Token JSON files.
• Added a new Custom Template build task, where you can make your own Stencil template and export however you want. See our sample templates and help page for more information.
• Added a LESS export option for build tasks.
• Improved Asset Catalog export.

1.2

23 January 2025

• Added support for numbers and booleans. You can now add these to Pinwheel and export them in lots of different formats, including into Figma using our plugin.
• Added support for numbers and booleans when importing Design Token JSON files.
• Improved and updated lots of small things in the UI including removing the top level colors item.
• Fixed some layout issues that could occur if you had really long, like really really really really really long item names. Long names are now also middle truncated so that the end is always readable.
• Fixed an issue where if your variable names had slashes in them, the Asset Catalog export would create folders out of these slashes. They are now removed to match how Apple handles this case.

1.1.3

20 December 2024

• If you're using Figma we have a new plugin we’d love for you to try. It exports color variables as Design Tokens JSON. We think it might be the first plugin to do this with full support of sRGB and Display P3. You can import the file it exports straight into Pinwheel! Search for Pinwheel in the plugin section of Figma to try it out.
• We’ve given the app one last tune up before the end of year.

1.1.2

18 December 2024

• Color values you enter are now clamped correctly, and we’ve made lots of small improvements to the text parsing of colors.
• The color picker will now automatically change the format its showing if you switch to a color space that doesn’t support your current format.
• Fixed an issue where drop downs had tiny artefacts around them. The fact that none of you noticed, well, don’t make me get the shame bell out.
• Fixed lots of other small bugs.

1.1.1

11 December 2024

• Added a new right click option that lets you apply the naming from any color set to any other color sets you have selected. Hopefully it saves you some typing!
• Added a new command line option (-autohc) which can auto generate high contrast variants as part of an import and build. Get your accessibility on automatically, no work required!
• Groups imported from Design Token JSON files are now namespaced by default as part of the import.
• Fixed an issue where changing the number of steps in a color set with manual naming could cause issues.

1.1

6 December 2024

• Added high contrast variants for colors. A color can now have up to 4 variants: Light, Light High Contrast, Dark and Dark High Contrast. You can specify high contrast variants manually, or you can let Pinwheel do it automatically with a configurable contrast.
• Added a command line option to import a Design Token JSON file, as well as build settings from a Pinwheel document so you can export automatically in all the different formats you specify. See the help section on this for more information.
• Color aliases now have their own appearance settings.
• Improved Design Token JSON import and export features.
• Improved contrast testing.
• Improved various build export formats.
• Fixed an issue where sometimes the color picker would close while you're editing a color.

1.0.4

28 November 2024

• Improved WCAG and APCA testing results, failed tests will now show ratio information.
• Improved Design Tokens JSON import, it now handles nested groups better. Also new: if you put groups named “Light” and “Dark” at the top of your design token file Pinwheel will attempt to import those as light/dark variants.
• Fixed an issue that could cause the “Generate Symbol Extensions” option on an asset catalog export to not export correctly.
• Fixed a data related crash.

1.0.3

25 November 2024

• Added appearance to color alias items. This means you can now select which colors you want to be light and dark variants for an alias.
• Added the option to generate swift symbol extensions for asset catalog exports.
• Asset catalog exports now include a contents.json file at the root. Not sure this does anything, but hey, now we match Xcode!
• The description field is no longer Helvetica. I realise we have committed the ultimate faux pas here and I can only offer our most sincere apologies. The appropriate people have been disciplined.
• Improved the logic for where new items are pasted/created.
• Right click context menu now has more items and doesn't show paste if there's nothing to paste.
• The color converter window no longer drops frames if you fling your mouse around with abandon while selecting a color to convert. No judgement here. Only performance.

1.0.2

21 November 2024

• Keyboard navigation for color set tables. You can now arrow up and down and hit enter to rename.
• Create color set from colors now does more sensible things if you have 1, or 2 colors selected.
• APCA and WCAG accessibility tables now show the contrast ratio/luminance value for failed checks.
• Alpha value is no longer included in CSS Color if the alpha is 1.
• Toast messages for copying colors now show the color that was copied.
• Fixed an issue where foreground and background colors weren’t being used correctly for WCAG testing.
• Fixed a crash that could occur when switching from table to grid view.

1.0.1

20 November 2024

• Added a “create aliases” context menu which will create aliases from all the selected colors and color sets.
• When moving a middle color, only the color is moved, the names will stay where they are.
• The context menu “create color set from colors” now supports aliases as well.
• Improved the way documents are saved.
• Fixed a crash that would occur if a test didn’t have enough colors in it.

1.0

19 November 2024

• Initial release.