ACO Converter

Extract text from ACO files

Select File
Drop or upload your .ACO file

Online File Converter

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How to extract text from your ACO file

Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your ACO file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.

Convert ACO to another file type

To convert your ACO file to another format, you need Adobe Photoshop or other Settings software.

Convert a file to ACO

To convert other file formats to the "Color Palette File" file type, you need software like Adobe Photoshop or a similar tool.

About ACO files

The .ACO file is a proprietary Adobe Color Swatch file used primarily by Adobe Photoshop to save and share color palettes. These files contain binary data representing color values (RGB, CMYK, Lab, or Grayscale) and optional names for each swatch.

Designers frequently run into friction with .ACO files because they are binary blobs, meaning you cannot open them in a text editor like Notepad to view the Hex codes or RGB values. If a client sends you an .aco file and you don't have a paid Creative Cloud subscription, the data is essentially locked. Additionally, while .ACO is native to Photoshop, other Adobe apps like Illustrator and InDesign prefer the ASE (Adobe Swatch Exchange) format, leading to compatibility errors during import.

Best Conversion Targets:

For Web Development: Convert .aco to CSS, SCSS, or JSON. This extracts the color values directly into code, saving you hours of manual copying.
For Cross-App Design: Convert to ASE to ensure the palette loads correctly in Illustrator, InDesign, and other design tools.
For Visualization: Convert to PNG or SVG to generate a visual "contact sheet" of the colors that can be viewed on any device.
For Archiving: Convert to HTML to create a lightweight, browser-viewable reference of the palette.

Convert.Guru analyzes your ACO file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.

Users also converted ASE, ACB, GPL, FRAMERCMS, SWATCHES, PNG, ACT, ZIP, PSD, TXT, PAL, ASO and AI files.

FAQ

If you want to convert ACO file to PNG, ASE, ACB, GIF, INI, CFG, CONF, CONFIG, JSON, XML, YAML or YML, you can use Adobe Photoshop or similar software from the "Storing Color Swatches" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….

To convert ZSHRC, CONF, RCFILE, GITCONFIG, RC, PLIST, BASHRC, CONFIG, PROFILE, INI, PREFS or CFG files to ACO, try Adobe Photoshop or another comparable tool in the "Storing Color Swatches" category.

The ACO Converter Story

The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our ACO converter.