Colour swatches (.fswatch)
Named colours stored as portable straight-alpha ARGB values.
Reviewed against the application source on 5 October 2026. Focale is in active development; available commands and published packages may differ by build.
Use in the application
Use the Swatches panel to capture, remove, import and export user colours. Choosing a swatch changes the current colour; editing the catalogue does not recolour existing documents.
File structure
UTF-8 JSON with an explicit format tag and version. The current reader and writer use version 1. The example shows the library envelope; the full reference describes the complete value schemas.
Each presets entry contains id, name, color and optional groupPath. color is an unsigned packed ARGB integer with straight alpha, not a CSS string. For example, 4278190080 is opaque black.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Extension | .fswatch |
| format | focale-color-swatches |
| version | 1 |
| Encoding | JSON UTF-8 |
{
"format": "focale-color-swatches",
"version": 1,
"presets": [
{
"id": "swatch.user.black",
"name": "Black",
"color": 4278190080,
"groupPath": [
"Studio"
]
}
]
}Validation and limits
Maximum: 16 MiB and 4,096 entries. Names and ids are limited to 4,096 UTF-16 code units and group paths to 32 segments. Importing a colliding identity assigns a fresh id. Built-ins are omitted.
Photoshop interchange
ACO is import-only. Supported Adobe values are converted to the catalogue colour model. Export .fswatch to preserve Focale names, groups and values.
Complete format references
Download the full Markdown specifications in English, including schemas, validation rules and compatibility details.