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Discord text formatting

Write the message and copy the markdown. No counting asterisks to work out which one you missed.

This copies the raw source. Discord renders it for you once it lands in a channel.

How Discord will render it
Raid night
Brevity is the soul of wit, so keep the plan short.
Polonius said that, right before he ignored his own advice completely.
Ping @here when you are ready.
This is red text.

This preview approximates Discord’s own dark theme so you can check the result before pasting. It is not this site’s colour scheme, and it is not pixel-accurate.

Cheat sheet

Every marker the toolbar above can insert, and the two it cannot yet (multi-line code and the ansi colour block still need the toolbar buttons for those).

**bold**bold
*italic*italic
~~strike~~strike
__underline__underline
||spoiler||
> quotequote
# headingheading
`code`code
```code block```multi-line
```ansi ... ```colour block
Mechanism

How this works

Discord reads a subset of Markdown, so the editor wraps your selection in the markers Discord recognises and shows the rendered result beside the raw source. Asterisks give bold and italics, two underscores give underline, two tildes give strikethrough, two vertical bars give a spoiler, backticks give inline code, a right angle bracket starts a quote, and a hash starts a heading. A fenced code block tagged ```ansi additionally carries colour: escape codes inside it set a foreground colour, a background colour, bold or underline, and Discord's client renders those exact colours in the message. What you copy is the raw source, since that is what Discord's own parser expects to receive.

Limits

Where Discord text formatting falls short

  • Discord supports a subset of Markdown, including masked links in ordinary messages. This tool previews a smaller selection of that syntax; it does not render masked links, tables or images. Check the final message in Discord.
  • ANSI colour support and appearance can vary by Discord client. Check the message on the devices your readers use, and keep essential meaning in the words rather than colour alone.
  • The preview approximates Discord's own dark theme and its eight ansi colours. It is not a pixel-accurate copy of the client, and the light theme looks different again.
Specimen

Good advice for anyone about to format a Discord message.

The default line is William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2. Public domain, like every sample on this site.

Questions

Questions about Discord text formatting

Why not just read the official docs?

The docs list the syntax and leave the assembly to you. You still write the markers by hand and hope you counted right before you hit send. Here the result renders while you type, so a missed asterisk is visible before anyone else sees it.

Does the colour block work for everyone who reads the message?

Do not assume everyone will see the same colours. Discord client versions and devices can differ. Test the pasted message on the relevant clients before using ANSI styling for a shared message.

How do I write a link with custom text?

Use [link text](https://example.com). Discord’s official Markdown guide supports masked links in ordinary messages. This preview does not render them, so check the result in Discord before sending.