This is still an issue. Please fix.

v26.3.1
Mac OS 12.4

Still a problem and none of the solutions work. Adobe has gone downhill. I'm frustrated with both AI and PS. Been using these programs for a decade now.

Same thing here, I'm sure this will "become" the "intended" operation of the tool as Adobe figures out they're developers no longer have the requisite expertise to reign in this codebase and fix the problems they keep adding. 50$ a month for this is absolutely unheard of, I will be looking for alternative software as I no longer have any confidence in Adobe to provide a stable product that is reliable in a professional use case.

I can second this bug on version 26.0.1

A group can be coloured all the way before using the eyedropper. Once the eyedropper tool was used on a group, you can't change the colour manually using switches anymore. The eyedropper tool itself messes with the group's integrity. This did not happen in previous versions.

Yes, I confirm that.
For some reason it started happening some time ago for source objects that have a fill below a stroke (a default order of appearance items). Picked appearance goes below Contents. It works fine for objects with the manually changed order of fill and stroke.
Merging this with a more recent report.
Thanks for your time, Tomas.

I always keep it all checked, as I said before, it's not working fine since the last update. I noticed it's not working when the object is a group, if I used directly in a compound path it works fine.

Tomas, can you share your settings for the tool?
Do you have both Appearance options ticked there?
Try to toggle these and see if it helps.
Please comment back on the result.

I've been using eyedropper tool for quite sometime now and it's always been great to copy colors, strokes, effects and others, but since the last update it's not working any more, the appearance shows the changes, but the object stays the same, what's going on? (in the image you can see the appearance says it's red, but the object remains black), I have reduced to basic appearance and tried other things but it doesn't work as always did.

I had the same problem and I found myself a fix! First you select your group and then Object>Expand>Ok and then you just select your group/now object and change the color in the eyedropper tool or in the fill area on your left.

My pleasure, Angeline. This tool is both easy and hard to embrace without some experimenting with Appearance panel. Official help lacks info on this behaviour.

The SOLUTION might be to open the Eyedropper Tool options and untick top checkmarks in both columns. Otherwise your picked style goes under the 'Contents' (check the Appearance stack if you are experiencing this), and is obstructed by it.
'Unticked Appearance mode' is a default one and it seems that Ai sometimes changes these options without a user knowing. I already saw several reports about this.
Please comment if this solves it for you.

No apology necessary, Dana. I feel your pain! Clearly the devs at Adobe have no idea how to fix the issue, and that's why it keeps appearing in each and every AI update, despite numerous complaints.

Another update, another illustrator version with a useless eyedropper tool. This problem has been around for so long that I've started to get used to annoying workarounds, but really nothing can replace it. Fact is, you will have to ungroup objects or waste a lot of time with the recolor panel or color panel to work around.
And I've had this problem for at least 4 or 5 years, with 3 or 4 dirfferent computers/ mac versions/ illustrator versions. This is the most annoying bug ever. Sorry for letting out my frustrations like this but really, can't this be fixed? I don't need any new and fancy features, just make the tools work that are already there ;___;

Still an issue with 25.2

While I am not sure I understand your explanation of why the 'Appeerance' box being checked prevents text and groups from adopting the desired fill with the eye-dropper tool, I was having this same issue and your suggestion fixed it for me.

Thank you, Egor! :)

Still an issue in 25.0

November 2020 v25.0 it's still a issue when using the Eyedropper to select a color within the art board on Mac OS Catalina 10.15.7. @Adobe can we get a fix for this?

same

T R A S H

SAME.