Methods, systems, and non-transitory computer readable storage media are disclosed for selectively modifying live digital vector glyphs. For example, the disclosed system can use a vector description of a live vector glyph having a plurality of regions defined by a plurality of paths to determine a vector document object model including style information for the paths. The disclosed system can extract a color for a selected region from the style information for the paths (e.g., from a stylesheet) and then change the extracted color to a selected color. After modifying the color, the disclosed system can then generate an updated vector description with the modified region color and render the updated live vector glyph at a client device. The disclosed system thus updates the live vector glyph while maintaining the glyph as a live glyph.