About this site

zalgo-text.org is a small, free collection of Unicode text tools. Type something, pick a style, copy it. That is the entire product, and there is deliberately nothing else — no account, no paywall, no newsletter popup and no upload of anything you type.

Why build another one?

Text generators are one of the oldest categories of free web tool, and most of them share the same problems: a wall of ads around a tiny input box, styles that quietly produce broken characters, and no explanation of why anything works.

We wanted three things to be different. The tools should be correct — every style map here was generated programmatically from the Unicode standard and then verified character by character, rather than copied from another site. The interface should be usable on a phone, since that is where most people copy text from. And the site should explain itself, because almost every problem people hit with these tools has a specific, knowable cause.

How the tools are built

• Style maps are generated, not hand-typed. A script walks the relevant Unicode blocks and emits the mappings, then checks every output character is actually assigned. Hand-copied tables are where the broken characters on other sites come from.
• Known gaps are documented rather than hidden. There is no small-capital Q in Unicode and no superscript q. We say so on the relevant pages instead of silently substituting and hoping.
• The Zalgo cleaner is not naive. Most cleaners normalise text first and destroy real accents in the process. Ours strips combining characters from the raw string, so café survives.
• Everything runs client-side. No text is ever sent to a server, which is a privacy property rather than a promise.

What we will not do

• Call these fonts. They are substitute characters, and the difference explains most of the problems people run into.
• Claim everything works everywhere. Coverage genuinely varies by device and platform, and pretending otherwise just wastes your time.
• Ignore the accessibility trade-off. Styled text is harder for screen readers. That is worth knowing before you style your display name rather than after.
• Ask you to sign up. There is nothing to sign up for.

How the site is funded

Through limited advertising that does not block the tools or interrupt what you are doing. There is no paid tier, no usage limit and no selling of data — since no data is collected in the first place. See the privacy policy for specifics.

Get in touch

Found a character that renders incorrectly, or a style you would like added? The contact page has the details. Bug reports about specific characters are particularly welcome — they are the fastest way to make the tools better.