It’s a common joke that the “U” in USB is a mistake. The format is hardly universal. There are multiple connector types — mostly USB-A and USB-C, these days — and no matter which one you’re dealing with, it’s sometimes hard to tell what sort of data speeds you’ll be getting, let alone power delivery. Consider that 2025’s entry-level iPhone 17 has a USB-C port, but can only move data at USB 2.0 rates, despite the fact that the 2.0 spec originally launched a quarter-century ago. Hope you have an hour handy if you’re trying to backup your phone, or transfer large amounts of 4K video.

As if that weren’t confusing enough, some of the ports on laptop, desktop, and tablet PCs (including their accessories) come in different colors. This is something I never paid much attention to until recently, if I’m honest. But as I’ve learned, it can potentially sort out some of the chaos on older machines. That’s not the case on newer ones, as I’ll illustrate.

What do the different USB port colors mean?

A naive but well-meaning effort

The colors are the brainchild of the USB Implementors Forum, or USB-IF, an industry group that oversees all USB standards. Its members include corporations like Apple, Intel, HP, and Microsoft — some pretty heavy hitters. This explains why Macs are often at the vanguard of port technology, even if Apple had to be dragged kicking and screaming into adopting USB-C on iPhones instead of Lightning. Ultimately it took new regulations from the European Union, but I digress.

Back on topic, the colors are mostly intended to signal what data transfer speeds a port is capable of. In some circumstances, they can indicate power capabilities as well, if not always the actual wattage you’ll be dealing with. That’s extremely important when it comes to tablets and laptops — while some products can charge via USB-C instead of a dedicated power brick, you won’t be able to charge a 240W gaming laptop that way if its ports max out at 100W.

There are six colors you might find in the wild: white, black, blue, red, yellow, and orange. These are all gradually becoming irrelevant, though, for reasons that will become clear in the next section.

• White: You’re unlikely to see this anymore, since it’s tied to USB 1.x — a standard that was only around for four years before being completely eclipsed by USB 2.0. 1.x ports are only capable of 1.5 to 12 megabits per second (Mbps), which at best would take over 11 minutes to transfer 1GB of data. Power is capped at 2.5W, which is barely enough for a mouse or keyboard.
• Black: As originally intended (more on this in a minute), black signals USB 2.0 speeds up to 480Mbps. Charging is unaffected. When in doubt, assume that a black port won’t do any better than 2.5W.
• Blue: This is one of the most common colors you’ll see, flagging USB 3.0 data speeds up to 5 gigabits per second (Gbps). Since USB 2.0 is increasingly a relic of the past, you’ll sometimes see it on accessories that have nothing to do with data, like portable battery packs.
• Yellow: This may be used for both USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports, which is a needless overlap, in my opinion. In any event, the main purpose is to show support for always-on functions as well as passive power delivery. A phone connected to a yellow USB port should be able to continue charging even when your PC is asleep, for instance.
• Orange: I’ve never seen this color in person, and it’s not hard to understand why — this indicates the same power technology as yellow, but exclusively for USB 3.0 connections. The 3.0 standard is still very much around, but any modern hardware maker that cares about both data and power is probably going to use a newer standard.
• Red: This points to either USB 3.1 Gen 2 or USB 3.2 speeds between 10 and 20Gbps. For a measure of how quick that is, consider that 1GB transfer example I pointed to earlier — with a 20Gbps connection (including a compatible cable), you can copy the same data in about 0.4 seconds. A red port also tends to denote always-on functions, but this may be moot, since that and passive power delivery are often de facto on modern PCs.

What about USB 4 and Thunderbolt?

A sign of the times

If you’re relatively new to the PC space, you might be wondering if I’m hallucinating these colors. Indeed, on the Lenovo gaming laptop I bought recently, all of the USB ports share a single color — black — despite the fact that they’re rated for at least USB 3.0 performance, and one of them is a USB 4 port I use to attach a Thunderbolt 4 dock. The same is true of many other computers, including Apple’s Mac lineup. It doesn’t matter if you have a 13-inch MacBook Air or a decked-out Mac Studio.

What gives? The answer is that the USB-IF and manufacturers have largely abandoned color coding, presumably because few people were aware that it had any significance. There’s been almost no promotion — I’ve been in tech journalism for decades, and I still had to go out of my way to learn the things presented here. It’s as if the USB-IF opened a new store in town, then wondered why no one bothered to show up when the only advertising was a tiny lawn sign.

Another reason for the shift is the accelerating transition to USB-C connectors, usually associated with USB 3.1 or later. It’s not so much that USB-C ports are tiny — it’s that they’ve been multi-purpose from the start, so there’s no need to flag one as built for charging or high-speed data. Some ports will definitely perform better than others, but in that regard, colors couldn’t possibly cover all the different speed and power configurations without becoming even more head-scratching.

Instead, the move has been toward something obvious: labels. My laptop’s 10Gbps port has that in writing, and its USB 4 connection is topped by a lightning icon, representing Thunderbolt support. All the USB 3.0 ports are marked with the USB SuperSpeed (“SS”) logo. I may still need to check my system’s official specs to see how much power USB-C accessories can tap, but for every other situation, there’s no need to look at paint swatches.