Delete Color Swatch from FCP

I'll preface this statement with: I'm still running Mojave and FCP 10.4.10.

All I have to do to delete color swatches in the System color picker is select the swatch and type the Delete key (either one - ⌫ or ⌦). Getting the color swatches to **select** is the trick.

When you open the Color Picker from FCP, the System window does not really "activate" and the window looks like:

The top bar is disabled. If you click in it and "activate" it so it looks like:

then the individual saved swatch colors can be selected and deleted.

[shows a selected color swatch — this outline may not *always* appear! However, typing delete will remove the last swatch you clicked on... so make sure before typing delete.]

Also: creating a *new* color swatch by clicking the sample and dragging it over the "collection" will (generally) activate the window so that the colors can be "edited". The giveaway is usually the mouse cursor will change and display a green circle with + in it. This can be forced by creating a "new" color swatch before attempting to delete any of the older ones... (which is rather counter-intuitive...)

HTH

I think you mean the swatches in the system color picker that’s accessed from inside FCP. I don’t think they can be removed, only replaced. You could replace them with white.

Oh - no problem.

After the "pegasus security" update (09/2020), I lost the use of the application color pickers in both Final Cut and Motion. I have to "live" in the Color Picker so to speak. I probably wouldn't have noticed otherwise — It took me quite awhile to figure out what was going on!

Sorry about the delay in response. I was working on painting the house this afternoon - wore myself out - and sorta fell asleep for awhile after dinner. (I really hate time changes!)

Not as far as I can tell. You can reorder them by dragging, but I could not find a way to delete them.

EDIT - See Tom's solution.

Thank you, Fox! I had never realized that the problem was the window not becoming active.

It works just as you say - I'm in Sonoma, so it probably works in all versions of the OS.

Thank you for the detailed explanation.