Discord markdown
Discord uses its own dialect of markdown. Most of it matches what you already know, with a handful of additions and a longer list of omissions.
bold
italic
underline
strikethrough
bold italic
inline code
a quote
Heading 1
Heading 2
Heading 3
- a bullet
- a numbered item a link
||spoiler text||
-# small text
const highlighted = true;What usually goes wrong
__text__is underline here, not bold. This is the difference that catches people moving between Discord and GitHub.- Only three heading levels. A fourth hash renders as text.
- No tables, no task lists, no images from markdown. Images are uploads or links that Discord unfurls itself.
- A hash without a space after it makes a channel mention, not a heading.
What Discord supports
| Feature | How it works |
|---|---|
| Bold | **bold**, the markdown you already know. |
| Italic | *italic* or _italic_. |
| Underline | __underline__. This is the one that catches people: on GitHub the same markers are bold. |
| Strikethrough | ~~strike~~, two tildes, unlike Slack's one. |
| Headings | #, ## and ###, and no further. A fourth hash renders as text, and a hash with no space after it is a channel mention. |
| Subtext | -# before the line, which Discord added itself. Nothing else has it. |
| Spoiler | ||hidden||, also Discord's own. The reader taps to reveal. |
| Inline code | ` code `. |
| Code block | Triple backticks, and a language name is honoured: Discord highlights the block. |
| Blockquote | > for one line, >>> for everything that follows. |
| Lists | - or * for bullets, 1. for numbers, and they nest. |
| Links | A bare URL unfurls. [text](https://example.com) is a masked link, and Discord shows the destination before it opens it. |
| Tables | Not supported. A code block is the only way to line columns up. |
| Task lists | Not supported. The checkbox brackets render as text. |
| Images | Not from markdown. Upload the file, or paste a URL and let Discord unfurl it. |
Questions
Why is my bold text underlined?
Because you wrote `__text__`, which is bold on GitHub and underline on Discord. Use `**text**` for bold in both.
Can I post a table in Discord?
Not as a table. A fenced code block is monospaced, so padded columns line up, and that is what everyone does. Our table generator's Padded option produces that shape.
Sources
Everything above was read from these, not from memory. If a page here disagrees with one of them, the vendor is right and this page is out of date.
On a Mac, this should not need a browser
Double-clicking a .md file opens a text editor full of raw symbols, and the space bar in Finder shows you the same. The Mac app fixes both: it registers as the handler for markdown and adds a Quick Look extension, so the rendered document is one space bar away.
For Mac.