Discord Text Formatting: Every Markdown Code in One Cheat Sheet

Strikethrough: ~~text~~

Two tildes before and two after. There is no keyboard shortcut for it in Discord's own hotkey list (that list covers bold, italic, underline and inline code), so either type the tildes or, on desktop, select the text and use the small formatting toolbar that pops up.

~~Friday~~ Saturday, 8 PM
Merch drop: ~~$30~~ $25 this weekend
~~**Sold out**~~ back in stock

The first line is the one streamers use most: a schedule change where the struck-out day stays visible, so nobody thinks they misremembered. Swap the written time for a timestamp and every viewer also sees it in their own time zone.

Why strikethrough fails

• One tilde. ~text~ shows exactly that. It has to be two on each side.
• A look-alike character. Text copied from documents or other apps can carry a full-width ～ or a small ˜, which Discord does not treat as a tilde. Retype them.
• Inside backticks. Code formatting shows everything literally, tildes included.
• Crossed symbols when combined. Close in reverse order: ~~**text**~~ works, ~~**text~~** does not.

Bold: **text**

Two asterisks on each side, or select the text and press Ctrl + B (⌘ + B on Mac). Discord's help center lists that shortcut for the desktop app and the browser only; on a phone you type the asterisks.

**Stream starts in 10 minutes**
Rule 1: **no spoilers** outside #spoilers

Bold works mid-sentence, so use it on the two or three words a skimming reader must not miss. A whole paragraph in bold reads as shouting and hides the part that mattered. For a proper title, a header is the better tool.

Italic: *text* or _text_

One asterisk or one underscore on each side; Ctrl/⌘ + I on desktop. The trap is maths: type 5*3*2 and Discord eats the asterisks and italicises the 3. Write 5\*3\*2 or 5 × 3 × 2 instead.

Underline: __text__

Two underscores on each side; Ctrl/⌘ + U on desktop. This one is Discord's own addition — in standard Markdown (Reddit, GitHub, most note apps) __text__ means bold, so formatting copied out of Discord changes meaning.

It also catches programmers: Python's __init__ arrives as an underlined “init”. Put names like that in backticks.

Spoiler Tags: ||text||

Two vertical bars on each side hide text behind a dark block until a reader clicks or taps it. Discord gives you three ways to add one, according to its Spoiler Tags help article: type the bars, type /spoiler before the message, or select the text and click the eye icon (on iOS, select the text and tap Mark as Spoiler).

The winner is ||the underdog||
||https://clips.twitch.tv/…||

• Images and videos: attach the file, then click the eye icon on it before sending (on mobile, tap or long-press the thumbnail and choose Mark as spoiler).
• Links: wrap the URL in bars and the preview card is hidden too. Server invite embeds are the exception — Discord says they cannot be hidden.
• Code blocks cancel spoilers. Bars inside backticks stay visible as bars.
• Readers can switch spoilers off. The “Show spoiler content” setting (On click, Always, or On servers I moderate) exists in the desktop and browser app only, so do not assume everyone is protected.

Headers: #, ## and ###

One, two or three hash signs, then a space, at the very start of a line. Discord supports those three sizes. Without the space you get a plain #hashtag, which is the most common reason a header “does not work”.

# Stream Schedule
## This week
- Mon: Valorant ranked
- Thu: community games
### Rules
Be kind. No spoilers.

Headers turn an announcement or rules post into something people can scan, which matters once your server is where the community lives between streams — part of growing a Twitch channel past the live hours.

Small Text: -# (Subtext)

Start a line with -# — hyphen, hash, space — and the line renders small and grey. Discord calls it subtext. Like headers it must be the first thing on the line and covers only that line, so each small line needs its own -#.

Giveaway ends Sunday!
-# Not sponsored. One entry per person.
-# Winners are drawn live on stream.

It is the native answer to “small text” searches. The “tiny text” generators you find online do something different: they swap letters for look-alike Unicode symbols, which are not real letters — Discord search and screen readers do not treat them as the words they resemble.

Hyperlinks: [text](URL)

Discord calls these masked links: the words in square brackets, then the full address in parentheses, with nothing between them.

Watch the [VOD from last night](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/…)
No preview card: <https://streamer.guide>

• [text] (url) with a space breaks it. Use the full address, https:// included.
• Wrap a bare URL in angle brackets, <https://…>, to post it without the embed.

The traffic usually runs the other way too: your Discord invite belongs in your stream panels, which our channel panels guide covers.

Lists: -, * and 1.

Start each line with - or * and a space for bullets, or 1. for a numbered list. Add two spaces before the bullet to indent a sub-item, per Discord's help center.

1. Join the voice channel
2. Pick a role in #roles
  - Viewer
  - Clipper

Block Quotes: > and >>>

> at the start of a line quotes that line. >>> quotes everything after it to the end of the message — there is no closing marker, so put >>> last if you want your own comment above the quote. Both need the space.

> Can we get a Minecraft stream?
Yes — Thursday.

>>> Patch notes
Everything down here is quoted,
however many lines it runs.

Code Blocks and Syntax Highlighting

One backtick on each side makes inline code; three backticks on their own lines make a block. Name a language right after the opening three backticks — no space — and Discord colours the syntax.

```py
print("going live")
```

```json
{ "bitrate": 6000 }
```

• Everything inside is literal: no bold, no spoilers, no headers. That makes code the easiest way to show Markdown symbols without them firing.
• To show a backtick inside inline code, wrap it in double backticks: `` a ` b ``.
• Syntax colours render on desktop and web; on phones they have been inconsistent for years, so never let colour carry the meaning.

Colored Text: ANSI Code Blocks

Discord has no colour option for normal text. The workaround is a code block tagged ansi, where terminal colour codes switch colours on and off. Each code is the escape character (written \u001b in a bot's source), then [, the numbers separated by semicolons, and m. \u001b[0m resets.

```ansi
␛[1;31mRed and bold␛[0m back to normal
␛[4;36mUnderlined cyan␛[0m
```

␛ stands in for the invisible escape character, which you cannot type on a normal keyboard. Bots write \u001b in code; by hand, copy the character from an existing ANSI message and edit the text.

Formats go in the same slot: 0 normal, 1 bold, 4 underline, so \u001b[1;4;32m is bold underlined green. The code list comes from the community ANSI guide for Discord — Discord's help center does not document ANSI — and the swatches approximate how the dark theme draws them.

The catch is phones: the same guide states ANSI is not supported on mobile, where readers may get plain text. For one line of red or green that works nearly everywhere colour does, a diff block is simpler — lines starting with + turn green, lines starting with - turn red:

```diff
+ Stream is live
- Tonight's stream is cancelled
```

Combining Formats

Stack the symbols and close them in the reverse order you opened them, like nested brackets.

Escaping: Show the Symbols Instead

A backslash in front of a symbol tells Discord to print it rather than format with it:

\*not italic\*
\|\|not a spoiler\|\|
\# not a header
\> not a quote

For anything longer, backticks are faster — everything inside code is literal. One desktop trick worth knowing: \:emoji_name: sends a custom emoji's raw code, <:emoji_name:ID>, which is how people find an emoji ID for a bot.

Mentions, Channels and Emoji by ID

Typing @name and picking from the list is the normal way. Under the hood — and in bot messages — Discord uses these formats, listed in its developer docs:

To copy IDs, turn on User Settings → Advanced → Developer Mode (on mobile: your avatar → the cog → Advanced). On desktop, right-click a user, channel or server and pick its Copy ID option; on mobile it sits in the user's ⋯ menu, a long-press on a channel, or the server name's menu. Discord's help center points out that <#channel id> sends a clickable channel link. User and role mentions notify people depending on the sender's permissions.

Timestamps: <t:UNIX:STYLE>

A timestamp shows a date and time converted to each reader's own time zone and locale — the fix for “is that 8 PM my time or yours?”. The number is Unix time in seconds, and the letter picks one of nine styles from Discord's developer docs:

Working out the Unix number by hand is the annoying part, so we built a free Discord timestamp generator: pick the date, time and time zone, copy any style with a live preview. The line that works for streamers is Live <t:1790884800:F> (<t:1790884800:R>) — the exact date plus a countdown that updates by itself. Use it for scheduled streams and for community nights you host with Discord's Go Live.

The two classic mistakes: pasting milliseconds (a 13-digit number from JavaScript's Date.now()) instead of seconds, and posting the code inside backticks, which shows it raw.

Desktop vs Mobile vs Bots

Formatting behaves the same in DMs, group chats and servers. What changes is the device and who is sending:

Formatting symbols count toward the message limit — 2,000 characters, or 4,000 with Nitro, per Discord's account caps article. Bots get 2,000 characters of message content; Discord's newer Text Display components for bots also take regular Markdown, headers and lists included. And none of this carries over to stream chat: Twitch chat renders no Markdown at all, and the shared vocabulary there is emotes — see our Twitch emotes guide for that side of chat culture, or the stream bots roundup for automating it.