Make Your Discord Messages Look Cool with Text Tricks

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Learn how to type cool, colorful, and organized Discord messages

Co-authored by Hannah Dillon Reviewed by Stan Kats

Last Updated: February 18, 2026 Fact Checked

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Markdown

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Colored Text

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Code Blocks

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Video

Have you seen other people on Discord making their text bold, creating lists, hyperlinking their text, or changing the color of their messages? There are a ton of Discord text tricks out there, and thankfully, learning how to do them is pretty easy. In this article, we'll go over how to use Markdown to do these Discord text tricks. We've even included plenty of examples to help you along! Keep reading to learn more.

Discord Text Tricks

There are a ton of ways you can edit your text on Discord, whether you want it to look cool or simply more organized. Most of these tricks are thanks to Discord's Markdown integration. Some common uses of Markdown are to make text bold (**bold**), italic (*italics*), underlined (__underline__), or struck through (~~strikethrough~~).

Section 1 of 3:

Markdown

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1
Text formattingTo change the formatting of your Discord text, you can either use Markdown (below) or highlight your text and use the ribbon of text formatting options that pop up.^{[1]
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1. - Italics: *italics* or _italics_
  - Bold: **bold**
  - Bold italics: ***bold italics***
  - Underline: __underline__
  - Underline italics: __*underline italics*__
  - Underline bold: __**underline bold**__
  - Underline bold italics: __***underline bold italics***__
  - Strikethrough: ~~strikethrough~~
2
Lists You can organize text in your messages by putting it in a list. Discord also supports nested lists.^{[2]
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- To create a list, put an asterisk (*) or hyphen (-) in front of each line that you want to include in the list.
- To create a nested list, type two spaces before the asterisk or hyphen.
  * First item * Nested list * Second item - Third item
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3
Block quotesYou can indent text and create a block quote easily using Markdown.
- To blockquote a line in your message, put a > in front of that line.
  > Blockquote Regular line of text
- To blockquote multiple lines in a message, put >>> before the first line.
  >>> Blockquote Also part of the blockquote
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Headers and subtext Headers and subtext can also be written with Markdown.
- To make a header, put a # in front of a line of text.^{[3]
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- There are three levels of header sizes: # is the largest, ## is a medium size, and ### is the smallest header.
- To make a line of text smaller (subtext), place a -# in front of it.^{[4]
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  # Large header ## Medium header ### Small header Regular text -# Subtext
5
Masked linksDiscord also supports creating masked links (also sometimes called embedded links). This involves hyperlinking part of your message so you can click on the text to visit a link instead of pasting just the link into your message.^{[5]
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- To create a masked link, simply type [link URL link text], but replace "link text" and "link URL" with the respective text and URL you want to send.
- Alternatively, you can highlight some text in Discord that you want to hyperlink and paste a link (using Ctrl+V on Windows and ⌘ Cmd+V on Mac) to embed the link easily.
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Spoiler tagsSpoiler tags in Discord will hide the text between the tags, so other users have to click on your text to read what it says. If you use these tags around links, the link embed will be spoilered as well.
- To put spoiler tags around your text, type ||text||, where "text" is the text you want to hide. The | symbol is called a "pipe," and you can find this symbol on a key usually above the ↵ Enter key.

Section 2 of 3:

Colored Text

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There are a few options, but for this tutorial, we'll be using Rebane's popular text generator.
Before you do any formatting, you should type your text into the generator. You can also copy and paste your text if you've already typed it up somewhere else.
You can highlight as much or as little as you want, from the entire block of text to just one character.
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Choose a text style and color. Your options are as follows:
- Style: You can choose to make your text bold or underlined.
- FG: This controls the color of your text. You can choose gray, red, olive green, golden yellow, blue, fuchsia, teal, or white.
- BG: This controls the highlight color of your text. You can choose dark blue, orange, lavender, cream, or one of four shades of gray (in varying tones).
If you want to start over, highlight some or all of your text and click Reset All next to the Bold button.
This will copy the text you just formatted in the generator in a Discord text block.
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Paste the text into Discord and send your message. Note that when you paste the text into Discord, it will look different from how it will look after it’s sent. You may see small characters next to your text; these are ANSI formatting codes that cause your text to change color.
- If you're on Discord mobile, you won't see the formatting. However, anyone who reads your message on a computer will be able to see the color changes.^{[6]
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Section 3 of 3:

Code Blocks

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1
Type ```, press ↵ Enter twice, then type ```. The symbol used is the backtick (or grave). If you can't find this symbol on your keyboard, the ALT code is Alt+9+6.
- On US QWERTY keyboards, the backtick is the button in the top-left corner.
- On other QWERTY keyboards, the backtick button is located by the backspace key, or it might share a key with the number 7.
- On AZERTY keyboards, the backtick button is by the Enter or Return button.
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Type the name of the language to apply syntax highlighting for. In this example, we're going to use Markdown, which is shortened to "md." The syntax highlighting will change depending on which language you're using. If you don't know how to use syntax highlighting for a language, use your favorite search engine to find a guide for that language.
- Press ↵ Enter after typing the name of the language; it won't send the message.
- The code thus far should look like this:
```md ```
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Type your text with the correct syntax on the blank line. For Markdown, the syntax highlighting works as follows (the color of the text will be typed out between the symbols that give it that color). To see what other syntax highlighting options there are, use this resource.
```
[light blue](white)
[light blue][orange]
# dark blue
* bullet point is yellow
1. numbered list is yellow
> green
<green>
<green blue>
<green blue = "light blue">
text above dashes is dark blue
------
text above equal signs is blue
```
You'll be able to see the colors when you preview the text before you send it, but you won't be able to see the code block background when typing. If you need to adjust your code block at all, you can simply edit the message to tweak things.^{[7]
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