Comparison

Pastel vs Codye

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Pastel

Easily capture, organize, and use color palettes for your creative projects. Analyze photos to extract dominant colors, or manually select them. Seamlessly sync your library across devices and export colors in various code formats or as pixel bitmaps.

Highlights
  • Capture color palettes from photos
  • Manual color selection
  • Drag and drop colors to other apps
  • iCloud sync across devices
  • Export colors in code formats (RGB, hex, Swift)
  • Create custom wallpapers
Features
Read full description

Capture and collect color palettes with Pastel! Pastel is an app for amateur developers & artists (like us!) that lets you build up a library of color palettes to use in your projects. With drag & drop on iPad, drag colors out into other apps that support dropped colors, like Pages and Keynote, or many third-party apps from your favorite developers, so you can use your Pastel library as your master color collection across apps. Seamlessly sync your library across devices with iCloud. Analyze photos from the photo library or from Files to determine their dominant colors — choosing specific colors manually if you wish — and save their color palettes to Pastel. Includes a variety of color pickers, like wheel, RGB sliders, and crayons, or pick named colors from your color library that you curate yourself. On iPad, drag and drop from the sidebar to any palette. Copy a variety of developer-focused code representations, like RGB, hex, Objective-C, Swift and SwiftUI. Paste hex codes into the sliders color picker. Copy a pixel bitmap representation of a palette to paste into your favorite pixel editor, share a screen-sized version to set as your wallpaper or Apple Watch face, or export a palette to Procreate®. Create beautiful, colorful wallpapers in various different 2D & 3D styles using Pastel's wallpaper creator. In the free version, try out the built-in library, and add your own palettes up to a limit of 8 items total. Upgrade to the unlimited version using in-app purchase. --- Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy policy: https://www.highcaffeinecontent.com/privacy

About

Codye

Easily present code snippets in a visually appealing format. Export highlighted code to various image and document formats, with extensive customization options for themes, styling, and presentation elements. Ideal for developers and content creators needing to share code.

Highlights
  • 180+ language support
  • 100+ themes
  • Export to PNG, JPEG, HTML, RTF
  • Customizable window buttons, line numbers
  • Adjustable width, corner radius, background color
  • Keyboard navigation
  • Shortcuts integration
Features
Read full description

Present code in a beautiful way with Codye! Tired of those blurry or plain-text code snippets in slides and documentation? Do you need to embed code in a fast, JavaScript-free way into your blog or website? Codye helps you present your code in more than 180 languages and more than 100 themes. You can export your highlighted code snippets to PNG, JPEG, HTML & RTF, while fine-tuning many options to your liking: - Show window buttons - Enable Line numbers - Custom or dynamic width of the code area - Custom corner radius. - Customize background color. Codye will look at your current theme and present you with custom colors to match the current style. You can also select any other color with the integrated HSB color picker. - Custom scale and resolution - Embed CSS styling to your HTML output - Shortcuts integration for automating your snippets Codye also allows navigating and using most of its features entirely from your keyboard, to enable power users to their most cutting edge needs.

Screenshots

Pastel4 screens
Codye4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: Pastel at 4.7 against Codye's 4.0. Pastel also leads on ratings volume (1.4K vs 24) and chart position (#131 vs unranked). Codye's advantage is update cadence (weekly vs monthly) and iOS requirement (13.4 vs 18.0). On price, review sentiment, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Pastel sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $1.99 per month and Codye sells 3 one-off in-app purchases. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Pastel holds the better App Store score, 4.7 against 4.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Pastel has 1.4K ratings behind it against 24, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 74% of Pastel's written reviews are positive against 71% of Codye's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Pastel ships an update monthly, Codye weekly. The most recent releases landed on September 24, 2026 and September 22, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard5 real differences · 6 level
Pastel versus Codye: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPastelCodye
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.7 (1.4K ratings) — better4.0 (24 ratings)
Positive reviews73.9% of reviews — better70.5% of reviews
Number of ratings1.4K — better24
Update frequencyMonthlyWeekly — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree with in-app purchases
Best chart rank#131 — better—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, Mac, Vision ProiPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac
Requires iOS18.013.4 — better
Further details — not scored
Size11 MB42 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperSteven Troughton-SmithDario Roa

Customer experience

Pastel

All ratings1,434 ratings
Positive93.0%
Neutral2.8%
Negative4.2%
Written reviews165 reviews
Positive73.9%
Neutral10.9%
Negative15.2%

Codye

All ratings24 ratings
Positive70.8%
Neutral8.3%
Negative20.8%
Written reviews78 reviews
Positive70.5%
Neutral9.0%
Negative20.5%

User reviews

Pastel

From 1.4K App Store ratings

What we love

  • 👍 Intuitive and clean interface
  • 🚀 Efficient color management
  • 💡 Ability to import colors from photos
  • 🎨 Great for designers and artists
  • 📦 Seamless integration with Procreate

Room to improve

  • 🐛 Disappearing custom palettes
  • 🔍 Lack of color picker functionality
  • 🤔 Confusing widget behavior
  • 🔀 Issues with rearranging colors in palettes

Codye

From 24 App Store ratings

What we love

  • ✨ Beautiful code presentation
  • 🎨 Wide variety of themes
  • ✨ Clean and intuitive UI
  • 💡 Great for educational purposes
  • 🚀 Time-saving tool

Room to improve

  • 🐛 Font size too small
  • 🐛 Inconsistent update frequency
  • 🐛 Some features feel gimmicky
  • 🐛 Paid version locks essential features
  • 🐛 UI can be jittery

Bugs and requests

Pastel

Reported bugs

3 issues
  • Palettes disappearing after OS updates
  • Delays and freezes when using color wheel
  • Inconsistent behavior on different devices/OSes

Requested features

5 requests
  • Color contrast analysis tools
  • CMYK color support
  • Easier way to copy/paste color codes
  • Improved palette organization and management
  • Integration with more design apps

Codye

Reported bugs

13 issues
  • Exported images have messed up parsing syntax
  • Background color picker doesn't work
  • Cross-platform purchase restoration issues
  • Cannot auto-refresh after style adjustment
  • Returns to previous style if not careful with refresh
Show 8 more
  • New version doesn't boot up (EXC_BREAKPOINT error)
  • UI panning is jittery
  • Basic paste operation not working
  • Unicode characters result in 'Undefined' output
  • App triggers review alert too early
  • Purchases not restoring on new devices
  • Language selection not working in new version
  • App crashes on launch

Requested features

18 requests
  • Integrate code snippet repository functionality
  • Ability to change font size
  • Ability to change background color
  • Add custom watermarks (user's name/logo)
  • Ability to change font size
Show 13 more
  • Support for custom fonts
  • Ability to save/import code snippets
  • Add React.js and Node.js language support
  • Support for SVG export
  • Option to remove app logo from paid version
  • Adjust gap between line number and code
  • Ability to zoom in/out
  • Import custom language/syntax highlighters
  • Add padding option
  • Auto-refresh after style adjustment
  • System font usage
  • Dark mode option
  • Advanced analytics dashboard

In-app purchases

3 purchases

Pastel

Subscriptions2
  • Pastel (One Month)14 Days trial$1.991 Month
  • Pastel (One Year)14 Days trial$9.991 Year
One-time1
  • Pastel (Legacy Purchase)$19.99
3 purchases

Codye

One-time3
  • Unlock All FeaturesFree
  • Codye ProFree
  • Codye Pro (Upgrade)Free

Questions

Is Pastel free?
Pastel is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Codye free?
Codye is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Pastel or Codye?
Pastel is rated higher. Pastel averages 4.7 out of 5 from 1.4K ratings, while Codye averages 4.0 from 24 ratings.
Do Pastel or Codye have ads?
Neither Pastel nor Codye shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Pastel or Codye?
Pastel ships an update monthly, and Codye weekly. Most recently, Pastel was updated on September 24, 2026 and Codye on September 22, 2026.

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