The need: To be able to drag and drop swatches onto the art board in Ai so we can compare hues and judge color values next to one another.

The problem to solve: Swatches are currently stagnant. I more flexible work flow allowing us to use color swatches the way we prefer and make exploration and tonal value comparisons easier would benefit both designers and illustrators.

I don't expect anyone on the Ai team to full comprehend this since you don't have anyone on the team that builds brand identity on a daily basis or works out colors for illustration everyday either etc.

In all reality you own this type of technology already since you bought Macromedia Freehand which allowed users to do this. So in that respect this isn't a new feature.

It's far more useful on a daily basis having this functionality then it is other features you've invested time in: Intertwine which just mocks up a look, but ultimately you still have to manually build it so it's not as useful as it seems. Text-to-Vector is another hot mess that produces unprofessional clip-art quality poorly constructed vector images.

I would suggest have a setting to enable this feature. By default it could be set to off so no noobs won't get confused, but allow pros to go in and check the box to enable it.

I'd want this for laying out palettes for presentations. One way to drag swatches (maybe one or as a group) to the artbaord and have the option to display the color code profile (between hex, cmyk rgb, pantone, or all).

Do you cook? :)

Imagine you want to make a meal.
You open a fridge, you grab the products you need, you put them on the table, grab a knife, cut products, cook them.
Sure, some don’t do that :) They run back to fridge every time (and they don’t upvote this probably).

Swatches panel is a 'fridge'

Take a look at how Von organizes his Swatches: https://youtu.be/aDnoMHs32-o
These are swatches he puts in a template and use across some of his projects.
Sure the illustration doesn’t need ALL of these.
So he 'puts chosen swatches on canvas' — like products — and cook with them only.

Take a look at the video above, from 28:40 specifically (https://youtu.be/aDnoMHs32-o?t=1720)

Swatches Panel can’t have these as large as he wants them to be.
We can’t make Swatches panel to hide some.
There is no way to quickly detach some colors into a floating panel.
Swatches are separated with thin lines and if prevents us from seeing how they react to each other.
We can’t make one swatch larger than other to set a ratio of colors (like Von does even later in the video — see image 1).

This image 1 is what artists do at the image 2.
And Swatches — is image 3.
And what is requested here — is image 4.

Number #2
I think it's about time to take action and make Drag-and-Drop Swatches to Artboard happen, I supported this idea in July 2023, and I can see over six pages of comments supporting this idea. I'm a packaging designer and would need it critically.

Number 2 for me.

Agree with Darrian Bagley, this function would make it much easier to create branding color palettes.

Also, in my case, doing package design for grocery: I send to the production team a "master" file with one flavor laid out, and then off to the side I make boxes with the colors for the other flavors. This way they can hit the ground running without having to come back to me for color choices before they upload into the workflow software for routing.

@Saurav Agrewal; I'd like Archit's option 2. Because the feature is lacking, I've written a script that adds the selected swatches (or groups of swatches) to the artboard as rectangles. But I'm still missing the option to just drag and drop a swatch from the swatches panel to the artboard.

```jsx
// Check if a document is open
if (app.documents.length === 0) {
alert("No document is open.");
}

// Reference the active document, swatches and artboard
var doc = app.activeDocument;
var swatches = doc.swatches.getSelected();
var artboard = doc.artboards[doc.artboards.getActiveArtboardIndex()];

var x = artboard.artboardRect[0];
var y = artboard.artboardRect[1];

if (swatches.length == 0){
alert("No swatches are selected.");
}else{
// Add a layer for the generated swatches
var colour_layer = doc.layers.add();
colour_layer.name = "Swatches layer";
for (var i=0, len=swatches.length; i < len ; i++) {
// For each swatch, add it to the artboard
if ( i > 1 && 5 % i == 0){ y -= 110; x = artboard.artboardRect[0]; }
// Size and color of block
var rect = colour_layer.pathItems.rectangle(y, x, 100, 100 );
rect.fillColor = swatches[i].color;
// No stroke
rect.stroked = false;
x += 110;
};
}
```

People who felt the need for this functionality :

Can you please highlight what is the underlying need/problem that you are trying to solve?

If you want to visualise the swatched clearly, you can just increase the size of the thumbnail.

Meanwhile, Sergey Osokin made a script, ColorToner, that automates making shades-tints-tones, with a great range of options: customizable steps and purity, text legend, size and gaps, preview, adding to swatches, etc.
Worth having if you are into this workflow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-MK0bEbD78

This would be an amazing addition to Illustrator. Having live swatches displayed as you need them next to the art - for presentation of color chips and for the functionality of having them attached to your art. I like option 2, and would love to have my global swatches next to my art that I can change and update the art. And what if Recolor Artwork could generate new global swatches (like it does for patterns and gradient swatches) when you recolor the art with the global color chips attached.

If we had to choose, I'd choose option 2, but having the option for both would be ideal.

I like Both Ideas to have as an option. I actually for years have been creating swatches that I copy over for projects to track my color for projects so I can do exactly as you suggest in #2. The current limitations of 5 colors in a paltter for a library is waaaayyy too limited. Can we get that amped up and then be able to access our swatches from LIbraries and launch the #2 pop-up window?

Option 2 please!

How about giving the user both. Let us have more choices. But based on how you framed the responses above I'd pick 2. 1 just seems like what we already have and if the swatches have white lines around them it doesn't help to make value judgements. Why can't you do what I mocked up in 'Drag-and-Drop_Swatches' image above? Then just give us controls like no white outline and let them behave like a regular swatch does?

And since someone on the Ai team will read this, when will you fix the snapping bug in Ai? It's been over ten years and I showed your engineers in 2019 when I was in New Delhi and they confirmed it's broken but still no fix on a vector building functionality that should be ironclad dependable and isn't?

Option 2!
It's about time you responded to this suggestion from 3 YEARS AGO!!! Do better!

Method 2 please, following Von's original suggestion. That said, it would be a welcome addition to filter the Swatches Panel by selected.

2. Selected Swatches to show up as rectangular objects on the canvas (in a separate layer). Users can use eyedropper to pick up colors (ability to pick Fill, Stroke, Appearance in such cases).

2. Selected Swatches to show up as rectangular objects on the canvas

Being able to quickly create shapes from swatches by clicking and dragging multiple will make it trivial to create visualizations of color palettes for brand guidelines. Especially if we're given options for the grid layout like mentioned in the original idea.

I think it’s much faster to drag to drop to canvas,
1: they are easy to see.
2: you don’t have to enlarge layers, otherwise this will take up work area, and you only need certain swatches not all enlarged.

Selected Swatches to show up as rectangular objects on the canvas (in a separate layer). Users can use eyedropper to pick up colors (ability to pick Fill, Stroke, Appearance in such cases).

The site wouldn't accept my original login. So I just voted for this again with my new login. It's like having a clone. I'm curious how many votes it takes to be added to a dev list? How many votes did it take to change the guides in Ai that no one was asking to be changed?

There are several external methods of doing that.
https://github.com/johnwun/js4ai/blob/master/renderSwatchLegend.jsx
or
https://productivista.com/make-a-list-of-colors-from-your-selection/
and
https://o2creative.co.nz/shop/Powerscripts/Color_Sample_Prints_PowerScript_for_Adobe_Illustrator