How to Change the Color of Your Text in Discord

How Color Text Works on Discord

Discord color text is written in code boxes with syntax highlighting. In Discord, you can write code boxes by surrounding your text with three backticks on either side of your text (for example, ```code here```). Since code boxes are mainly used for, well, code, there's also the ability to note which language the code is written in—and depending on the language, this can sometimes display your text in a different color. There are a lot of languages supported in Discord code blocks. Discord uses the highlight.js library to power their code blocks syntax highlighting, which supports well over 40 languages. The most common language to use for colored Discord text is ANSI. Because of this, there are some generators online that allow you to create colored Discord text using an ANSI code block very easily. Learn how to do this below. ANSI is popular because it's much easier to manipulate what color your text is. Other languages will only allow you to change the color of your text if a certain condition is met (such as the line starting with a specific symbol or word). Other popular code block languages include asciidoc, md, and diff. To learn how to type your own code block with colored text, jump to that section below.

Using a Generator

Open a Discord colored text generator in your web browser. There are a few options, but for this tutorial, we'll be using Rebane's popular text generator.

Type your text into the text box at the bottom of the screen. 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.

Highlight the first text you want to change. You can highlight as much or as little as you want, from the entire block of text to just one character.

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, fuschia, 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).

Repeat steps 3 and 4 as needed. If you want to start over, highlight some or all of your text and click Reset All next to the Bold button.

Click Copy text as Discord formatted. This will copy the text you just formatted in the generator in a Discord text block.

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 some small characters next to your text; this is the ANSI formatting that causes 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.

Typing Code Blocks

Navigate to where you want to send your message. If this is your first time using a code block, you might want to go to a private or personal server to practice, just in case the message doesn't look how you want after it's been sent.

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.

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 ```

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): [light blue](white) [light blue][orange] # dark blue * bullet point is yellow 1. numbered list is yellow > green text above dashes is dark blue ------ text above equal signs is blue ===== Here's some example text. Try pasting it into Discord to see what it looks like: ```md ROUND ONE =========== > Players: 1. John [20HP 10MP] 2. Jane [15HP 25MP] 3. Jack [30HP 0MP] 4. Jill [10HP 40MP] > Enemies: *Goblin A *Goblin B *Spider ```

Send the message. 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.