This script will generate a legend of rectangles for every swatch in the main swatches palette.

You can configure spacing and value display by configuring the variables at the top of the script.

How To Install

Runing Illustrator script

Is easy – press CMD+F12 or CTR+F12 (File>Other Script). However, if you want to have it accessible under Files>Scripts, its more complicated. But now there’s a script for that! Try it here script to open Scripts folder in AI or read on..

A bit less known way to launch script:

Just drag and drop the script file onto the Illustrator top area. If you drag it to the area of the open document, the script may not start. Warning message might pop up.

Unzip!

Illustrator understands scripts with

.vbs

.js
.jsx
.jsxbin

file extensions. Whilst .js and .jsx are plain text files, .jsxbin is proprietary binary format. If you script is in archive – .zip, .rar, you should unarchive your script file after downloading.  

It also could be scripted using AppleScript, but here we focus on JavaScript version of language Adobe uses – ExtendScript.