SnoopX

A pixel inspector for macOS with HDR support

SnoopX captures raw pixel R, G, B values and reports them for the pixel under the red square — 8-bit integers when in SDR mode, 16-bit floats when in HDR mode — at the bottom of the window.

Magnification

1 2 4 8 0 Set magnification to 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x, or 16x.

Capture Control

kFreeze or unfreeze the capture location.
uUpdate the capture once (while frozen).
Nudge the capture location by one physical pixel.
+arrow Nudge by 10 pixels.

The window can be expanded or shrunk by grabbing its edges or corners. If you want to simultaneously inspect two locations, make a copy of the app. Near the edge of the screen, a checkerboard indicates pixels beyond the screen.

SDR and HDR Display

⌃AAuto — choose Standard Dynamic Range (SDR) or High Dynamic Range (HDR) based on display capability.
⌃SSDR — pixel values reported in the range 0–255.
⌃HHDR — pixel values reported in f-stops, where 1.0 = 256, as in Adobe Lightroom.

EDR Rendering

⌃GGamma — matches what you see on screen, but clamps to the display’s dynamic range.
⌃LLinear — can display any dynamic range, but washes out colors.

Scanline Plots

Drawn inside the snoop window along the indicator row or column. Press the hotkey again to turn the plot off, or press o to turn off any plot.

pHorizontal plot of pixel values along the indicator row.
vVertical plot of pixel values along the indicator column.
⇧PHorizontal step plot (one bar per pixel).
⇧VVertical step plot (one bar per pixel).
lShow or hide the indicator line marking the plotted row or column.

Color Plots

Opens a popup window that re-renders whenever the snoop window updates, showing the distribution of all pixels currently in the snoop window. Press the hotkey again to turn the plot off, or press o to turn off any plot.

cColor vectorscope — hue-saturation-value scatter plot of all snooped pixels.
wColor waveform — chroma trail by column.
hColor histogram — per-channel pixel distribution.

Statistics and Swatch

iShow or hide statistics (min, max, mean, median) for all pixels in the window.
sDisplay a swatch of the snooped color.

Plot ordinates follow the display mode: 0–255 for SDR, f-stops for HDR.