What Is My Color Depth? Bits Per Pixel

Your screen's colour depth is shown above, measured in bits per pixel. This is how many bits your display uses to describe the colour of a single pixel. The near-universal value today is 24, meaning 8 bits each for red, green and blue, which yields roughly 16.7 million colours.

You may occasionally see 30 (10 bits per channel) on wide-gamut or HDR-capable displays, which can show smoother gradients and more colours. Lower values like 16 are rare now and usually indicate an older display or a remote-desktop session that is saving bandwidth by sending less colour data.

Colour depth is about the number of distinct colours, not brightness or gamut on its own. A higher depth mostly helps by reducing visible banding in smooth gradients like skies and shadows.

What you should know

Why sites collect it

Sites rarely branch on colour depth directly, but graphics-heavy applications and analytics may read it to understand display capability. Fingerprinting scripts collect it because it is trivially available.

Privacy implications

Colour depth is a low-entropy signal because almost everyone reports 24. Precisely because most people share the same value, an unusual depth (like 30 or 16) stands out more and adds slightly to a fingerprint.

How to change or hide it

You can change colour depth in your operating system display settings, but there is little reason to, and doing so affects everything you see. Most users leave it at the standard 24. There is no per-site control.

Frequently asked questions

What color depth is normal?

24 bits per pixel, which is 8 bits each for red, green and blue and about 16.7 million colours. That is what the vast majority of displays report.

Does higher color depth mean better color?

It mainly means smoother gradients and less banding. Wide-gamut and HDR panels may report 30 bits and show more colours, but panel quality and calibration matter just as much.