Coloured Text Maker
Write coloured and highlighted text using the ANSI escape codes Discord renders inside code blocks. The only way to get colour into an ordinary message.
Text runs
Each run gets its own colour. Select one to style it.
Style run 2
Text colour
Background
Preview
Approximate. Discord's exact shades vary slightly by theme.
63 / 2000 characters
Copy this into Discord
```ansi [37mWelcome to [0m[1;32mthe server[0m[37m![0m ```
Worth knowing: the Discord mobile apps have historically ignored ANSI and show this uncoloured. Do not rely on colour alone to carry meaning in a rules channel.
How coloured text works on Discord
Discord has no colour syntax in ordinary markdown. What it does have is one narrow exception: a fenced code block tagged ansi is passed through a renderer that understands a small set of ANSI escape sequences — the same ones a terminal uses. That is the entire mechanism behind every colourful rules channel you have seen.
The subset is small on purpose: eight text colours, eight backgrounds, bold and underline. Codes outside that range are ignored, so a generator offering 256 colours is offering you something Discord will not render.
The two things that go wrong
A missing reset. An escape sequence stays in effect until something turns it off, so a colour set at the start of a line bleeds into everything after it. This tool emits a reset after every styled run.
The invisible characters count. Escape codes are part of the 2000-character message limit even though nobody can see them. A block that looks like 300 characters of text can easily be 600 once styled, which is why the counter above measures the finished block rather than what you typed.
Mobile
Discord's mobile clients have historically rendered these blocks without colour. Treat colour as decoration rather than meaning: if a rule only reads as important because it is red, a large share of your members will miss that entirely.