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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Brandon Ortega commented
+1 I need this
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Bill Bowman commented
Yes, please add this feature.
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El Joud Mohamed Yahye commented
Great idea, it’ll help a lot saving time, mainly colored illustration and fast coloring.
Totally support this -
Josh McKible commented
Yes, this!
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It looks almost like Swatch Libraries palettes you can open and enlarge swatches to a not that big a size. So it’s almost there already.
Gap options, larger size for squares, and easier way to create and save and manage these windows? -
Shane Rushby commented
Great idea. I haven't done the math, but the number of less clicks to achieve the same thing I imagine would drop by a huge percentage!!!
I highly doubt any design professional utilising AI PS ID wouldn't find this a useful part of their process!!
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Anonymous commented
Yes, this would be good. Same for Photoshop.
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Shelly Webster commented
This would save me making project swatches; and speeed up color work.
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Josh kimerling commented
Killer idea
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Lisa Sher commented
+ 1 for the drag n drop swatch to art board. It would be a timesaver.
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Anonymous X commented
I definitely need something like this, both in InDesign and Illustrator.
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matt jennings commented
its half way there . . .just create a series of boxes with fills all with same fill colour (any) and then drag swatched on the boxes. The boxes will take on the new colour you just dragged. (works for patterns as well.
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Nick commented
Makes great sense! I can see lots of our customers use this in their workflow.
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Walid Douzi commented
Yes please we need it, to facilitate our artworks. Thanks mr glitschka for the request
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Anonymous commented
I think this would be a very useful addition to Illustrator. Highly support this suggestion.
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Kathy J. commented
I vote 'yes' to allow users to drag a swatch to the artboard and drop it.
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Anonymous commented
Yes please! Saves me having to make my own all the time!
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Paul Lukes commented
Great idea. This would be beyond helpful/useful.
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Nick commented
Be able to select a swatch and be able to add a chip of that colour to the artboard which displays the colour breakdown information (CMYK, RGB, etc) or specific colour name/number (Pantone). This would be useful to show what colours an artwork is made up of or for colour reference.
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Lene Madsen commented
As a designer i really need a feature that makes it able to drag a swatch or a color group (ex. a Pantone swatch/colorgroup) onto the artboard and then be able to make a colorcard with a colored square and a textbox with the choosen color(s) color codes beside the square.
We do this manually and it takes a lot of time. We really hope this can be something we in the future could do automatic.