Text to ASCII Art Generator

Examples

Deploy in Standard. The first column is the left edge of the D, as in the figlet command:

 ____             _
|  _ \  ___ _ __ | | ___  _   _
| | | |/ _ \ '_ \| |/ _ \| | | |
| |_| |  __/ |_) | | (_) | |_| |
|____/ \___| .__/|_|\___/ \__, |
           |_|            |___/

Hello World in Mini. The font header asks for overlapping, so the letters share columns and the banner is 26 columns wide:

|_| _ || _  \    /_ ._| _|
| |(/_||(_)  \/\/(_)| |(_|

build passed in Small with Width set to 40. The second word does not fit, so it moves to a new block, as figlet -f small -w 40 does:

 _         _ _    _
| |__ _  _(_) |__| |
| '_ \ || | | / _` |
|_.__/\_,_|_|_\__,_|

                          _
 _ __  __ _ ______ ___ __| |
| '_ \/ _` (_-<_-</ -_) _` |
| .__/\__,_/__/__/\___\__,_|
|_|

Same output as the figlet command

The renderer is a port of figlet 2.2.5, the last release of the original program. Its test compares 840 renders against figlet 2.2.5 run with the same font files: every font, every spacing option, line breaks, word wrap at five widths, and characters the fonts lack. All 840 match character for character.

The previous version of this page used figlet.js 1.11, which gives different output for 8 of the 12 fonts on Hello World. Standard, Big, Banner, Block, Script and Small get an extra blank first column. Mini and Shadow are not overlapped, although their font files ask for it: Mini comes out 37 columns wide instead of 26.

The command in the FIGlet command section reproduces the art. Banner, Big, Block, Lean, Mini, Script, Slant, Small and Standard are glyph-for-glyph the same as the fonts in the figlet 2.2.5 package. Doom and 3D-ASCII are not in that package. Shadow here is a 2007 revision with a wider space. For these three, and for Standard text that contains ಠ, the command loads the .flf file from this site, with a download link next to it.

Spacing options

The FIGfont specification lets each font name a default layout and up to six “smushing” rules, such as “two equal characters become one” or “/ and \ become |”.

Fonts and widths

Measured with this tool, Trim on:

Standard, Big, Block, Lean, Mini, Script, Shadow, Slant and Small also draw Latin-1 letters such as é, ñ and Å; Standard covers Latin Extended-A (ł, š, ő) too.

Where to paste it

• README and Markdown: use Copy as → Markdown code block. Outside a code block, Markdown collapses spaces, and two spaces at the end of a line become a hard line break.
• Source code: use the # or // format. Keep Trim on: editors that follow EditorConfig trim_trailing_whitespace and linters such as pycodestyle (W291) flag or remove spaces at the end of a line.
• Shell scripts and ~/.bashrc: the heredoc format quotes the delimiter, so the shell does not expand $, ` or \ inside the art (POSIX here-documents).
• Login banner: the text of /etc/motd is printed after a successful login (motd(5)). Download the .txt file and copy it there.
• JSON or a JavaScript string: escape every \ and line break first, for example with the String Escape tool.

Compared with other generators

Checked on 2026-10-01 with Hello World and Hi 中文:

• TAAG runs on figlet.js, which was written for it. Standard gets the extra blank first column, Mini is 37 columns wide, and the CJK characters disappear without a message. It offers far more fonts than this tool and a Save as image button.
• asciiart.eu gives the figlet result for Standard, but Mini is not overlapped (37 columns). With any CJK character in the text, the output is empty. Its width defaults to 80, so Hello World in Block wraps.
• This tool matches the figlet command, lists skipped characters by name, and gives you the command to rebuild the art.

For styled letters that stay on one line in a chat or a profile, try the Fancy Text Generator. To check how the art looks in a README, paste the Markdown into Markdown Preview.

Limits

• 12 fonts. There is no font upload.
• Latin script only. Characters the font lacks draw nothing and are listed under the output. figlet turns a tab into a space and drops other control characters; these are listed too.
• 2,000 characters. Longer text shows a message instead of output.
• One block per line of text. figlet 2.2.5 has no vertical smushing, so lines are stacked as they are.
• PNG size. The image stays within 16,384 pixels per side and 16,777,216 pixels in total, the canvas limit of iOS Safari. Wider art shows a message; set a width.
• The art lines up only in a monospaced font.