Drag-and-Drop Swatches to Artboard
This functionality wouldn't change the swatches palette it, but would allow users to drag a swatch to the artboard and drop it. You could tile several to create a tonal family or brand color set.
Being able to scale them larger, arrange them, reformat the grid, turn the white gap off in between colors would improve color adjustment and comparing hues side by side. They'd function like the existing swatches panel in that you could have a shape or stroke selected and apply the color by clicking the swatch on the artboard.
This would help in color exploration and creating effective color themes. Save common color usage in your workspace set up, export out as a group, share via Libraries, copy and paste artboard swatches to another file etc.

As mentioned before, this got shipped into the main (GA) build, but the development is not completed. The team has been gathering all the user feedback and intends to address it.
Here are several relevant entries you can upvote.
Bug reports:
- Spots and Globals are converted into process colors when included into Swatch Info
- Swatches Info doesn’t work for the only swatch selected
- Swatch Info renders a saved tint as yet another copy of the main global color
- The default text color in Swatches Info is rich RGB black when used in a CMYK document
- Tabs in Swatch Info text are made with spaces instead of actual tabs
- Bottom margins for labels are too small for Swatch Info objects in the column view (with no card backgrounds)
Feature requests:
- Auto-Eyedropper when hovering over Swatches Info objects
- Allow to create Swatch Info object using a hotkey
- Allow to actually drag-n-drop swatches on canvas to create a Swatch Info object
- Allow to quickly enable or disable all Text Options for cards in Swatch Info objects
- Layout for Swatch Info should allow to set grid, not only a row or a column
- Allow to use custom user templates for Swatch Info objects
- Allow to set text format for CMYK values and other data in Swatch Info objects
- Allow to control font for Swatch Info objects
- Allow to place cards next to color chips instead of always below for Swatch Info objects
- Allow to include gradients and patterns in Swatch Info objects
- Don’t force creating a dedicated layer for Swatch Info objects
- Add Preview option when creating a Swatch Info object
Feel free to add more if you think something is missing in these lists.
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Willem Heijdeman commented
I would love to see this feature added in the next update. Thanks for sharing this Von Glitschka!
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Yvette McMaster commented
This would be very helpful when colouring vector art. Thanks.
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Anonymous commented
Artboard swatches. This would be so helpful. I usually create a "Colors" layer manually to do some of this, but the functionality of having them still be Swatches would be very useful.
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Anonymous commented
That would be helpful.
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Anonymous commented
this would be
awesome -
Kathy J. commented
This would be a real time saver.
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Ron Chan commented
This is something I can use a lot!
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This is not a panel, but may be this script I made could help somebody from 368 users who voted for this?
It will place selected swatches (or all if none are selected) as a group of colored rectangles wit a set dimension.
https://twitter.com/tchegr/status/1330496523428372482 -
Jasmeet Singh commented
Really need this feature.
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Bob Moniz commented
definitely a needed feature
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P.S.R. commented
Add it please
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Elena Salsi commented
Please add this feature!!
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Bartosz commented
Me approve.
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Jay Dub commented
That is a great idea and one I fully support.
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Jeremy slagle commented
Love it! Let’s make this happen!
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Shelly Webster commented
This would be a timesaver for me. So would better vector export to 3d Packages.
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Samantha Rorke commented
Drag and Drop swatches would be a phenomenal feature!
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Rahul Kulkarni commented
Yes! I have been using Illustrator for 12 years and this will be so awesome. It will save a lot of time.
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Charity Jantzen commented
I have been using illustrator for over 20 years and I have always wanted this feature I can’t wait to see it implemented.
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Lisa McKinney commented
Please add this feature. I love using it in the Procreate app.