Discord offers a variety of ways to transform boring messages into beautifully styled text. Whether you want to announce rules, make a bio stand out, or just send a cooler message in general, there are native markdown tricks you can use.
๐ฅ Pro Tip: Don't guess how your formatting will look!
Before sending a complex, colorful message to your server, you can write and test it in our completely free Discord Message Editor & Previewer. It's a live replica of Discord's chat box that renders your markdown, small text, and syntax colors perfectly in real time!
1. How to Make Text Colored in Discord
Discord doesn't have an official text color feature, but you can "hack" colors using code blocks. Discord uses the highlight.js library for syntax highlighting, which means different programming languages will color text differently.
To use colors, create a multi-line code block using three backticks, followed by the "language name", then your text, then three enclosing backticks. It's highly recommended to test these inside our Message Editor to see the exact shades.
Red Text (using diff): `diff
- This is red text! `
Green Text (using diff): `diff
- This is green text! `
Cyan Text (using bash):
ash "This is cyan text"
2. How to Make Text Small (and BIG)
Discord recently introduced new markdown rules for headers and subtext.
To make text tiny (Subtext): Start the line with -# (a dash, a hash, and a space):
-# This will be tiny text, perfect for disclaimers or whispers!
To make text BIG (Headers): Use hash symbols at the start of the line just like standard Markdown: `
Heading 1 (Biggest)
Heading 2 (Bigger)
Heading 3 (Big)
`
3. Basic Markdown & Hidden Text (Spoilers)
Discord natively supports standard Markdown for quick, inline styling:
- Bold: Wrap text in double asterisks like this.
- Italic: Wrap text in single asterisks like this or underscores like this.
- ~~Strikethrough:~~ Wrap text in double tildes ~~like this~~.
- Underline: Wrap in double underscores like this.
- ||Spoilers:|| Wrap your hidden text in double pipes ||like this||. Clicking to reveal is a fun trick for hiding answers, jokes, or actual show spoilers!
4. Using Custom Font Styles (Non-Markdown)
While Discord officially only supports the markdown formatting above, you might see users with totally unique fonts like ๐ฎ๐๐๐๐๐๐, ๐ฒ๐๐๐๐๐, ๐ญ๐๐๐, or Zalgo.
These aren't markdownโthey are special Unicode characters! If you want to use these for server names, channels, or user bios, you can use our Discord Font Transformer. Just type your text, pick a style, copy it, and paste it straight into Discord.
5. Dealing with Long Messages
Discord has a strict 2000 character limit per message for free users. If you are writing a massive server rules post, an update log, or a story loaded with heavy markdown, you'll hit that limit even faster because the formatting characters count toward the limit.
Instead of manually carving your text up and ruining your intricate markdown formatting, use our Discord Message Splitter. It automatically breaks your giant paragraphs into perfectly bite-sized messages under the 2000 character limit without breaking your codeblocks!