Bold in Discord messages: use markdown
Discord formats messages with markdown, so you do not need a generator to bold a message. Type two asterisks, your text, then two more asterisks: **free shipping this week**. When you press enter, the asterisks disappear and the words show in bold.
On the desktop app you can also highlight text in the message box, and a small formatting bar appears with bold, italic and other options. On mobile, typing the asterisks yourself is the most reliable way.
The same markdown gives you the rest: *italic*, ***bold italic***, __underline__, ~~strikethrough~~, ||spoiler|| and `inline code`. For large text, start a line with # followed by a space.
You type
Event starts at **8pm**, bring a friend
Bold heading
# Weekly giveaway
Where markdown does not work, and Unicode bold does
Markdown is read in messages, not in names. Your display name, a server nickname, a channel name or a role name shows every character you type, asterisks included.
That is where the generator above helps. It swaps each letter for its bold Unicode counterpart, a different character that looks bold on its own. Paste it into your display name or nickname and it stays bold, because there is nothing to interpret.
Your username is the exception. Discord limits usernames to lowercase letters, numbers, periods and underscores, so bold Unicode letters are rejected there.
Use bold letters sparingly
Bold Unicode letters are not text in the usual sense. Screen readers may read them as a string of math symbols or skip them, so a member using one may not be able to read a name written entirely in them. Discord search matches plain letters, so a styled nickname is also harder to find.
A reasonable rule: use markdown for anything inside a message, and use Unicode bold for one short label where markdown is not available. If you copy styled text to X, note that X counts most of these letters as 2 characters each.