How to Bold Text in Discord: The Ultimate Guide

Whether you are trying to emphasize a crucial rule in your server’s announcement channel, highlight your call to action, or simply make your chat messages pop, knowing how to format your text is an essential Discord skill.

While Discord does not have a traditional rich-text formatting toolbar like Microsoft Word, it uses a lightweight markup system called Markdown to let you instantly change the style of your text.

Here is everything you need to know to make your text bold—along with a few extra styling tricks to level up your messaging game.

The Short Answer: How to Bold

To make any text bold in Discord, all you need to do is wrap your text in double asterisks (**).

• Type this: **Hello World!**
• Result: Hello World!

There cannot be any spaces between the asterisks and your words. If you put a space (like ** Hello World! **), the formatting won’t work, and Discord will just display the asterisks.

Alternative Method: Double Underscores

You can also use double underscores (__) to achieve the exact same bold effect.

• Type this: __Bold text using underscores__
• Result: Bold text using underscores

Step-by-Step Examples by Platform

Discord’s Markdown styling works universally across all platforms, including Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android.

1. Open Discord and go to any chat or channel.
2. Type your message and add ** to both the beginning and the end of the word or phrase you want to bold.
3. Hit Enter (or tap send on mobile) to watch your text transform!

Pro Tip for Mobile Users: On most iOS and Android devices, if you highlight/select a word or sentence you typed, a native formatting menu will pop up allowing you to bold, italicize, or strikethrough your text with a single tap—no symbols required!

Level Up: Combining Bold with Other Styles

Want to make your text even more expressive? You can combine bold with italics, underlines, or strikethroughs by nesting the symbols together.

| Style | Markdown Syntax | Result |
| :— | :— | :— |
| Bold | **text** | text |
| Italics | *text* or _text_ | text |
| Bold & Italics | ***text*** | text |
| Underline Bold | __**text**__ | text |
| ~~Strikethrough~~ | ~~text~~ | ~~text~~ |

Troubleshooting Common Mistakes

If your bold text isn’t working, check for these common culprits:

• Accidental Spaces: Writing ** this is bold ** will leave the asterisks visible. Make sure the asterisks touch the first and last letters of your target words: **this is bold**.
• Escaping Markdown: If you ever want to type asterisks without formatting your text, you can put a backslash () right before them, like this: **not bold**.
• Partial Formatting: If you are trying to bold an entire sentence that contains punctuation, ensure the asterisks wrap the entire phrase correctly without breaking words mid-stream.

Mastering Discord’s text formatting takes just a few seconds of practice, but it instantly makes your messages clearer, more professional, and a lot more fun to read!