asciify --charset braille
Braille art generator: turn images into dot art
Convert a photo, logo or meme into Unicode Braille characters, the dotted text art you see on Discord, X and Twitch. Every character carries eight dots, so you get far more detail than letters or symbols can give.
⠀⣠⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣦⠀ ⠠⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡆ ⠀⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀ ⠀⠈⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠁⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠙⠻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠿⠋⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠙⠿⠿⠋⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
How Braille rendering works
The Unicode Braille Patterns block (U+2800 to U+28FF) contains all 256 combinations of an eight-dot cell: two columns by four rows. A Braille art generator treats each character as a tiny 2×4 bitmap. The image is scaled so that every dot maps to one pixel, each pixel is decided on or off, and the eight results are packed into the matching code point. A 60-column picture is therefore 120 dots wide, twice the horizontal and four times the vertical resolution of classic ASCII art at the same size.
Because a dot is either raised or not, smooth gradients need help. asciify.art applies dithering, Floyd–Steinberg error diffusion by default for two-level modes, which scatters dots so mid-tones still read as gray. Contrast and brightness sliders control how many dots light up, so you can trade detail for a cleaner silhouette.
Make Braille art in four steps
- Open the generator with the Braille charset preselected and drop in an image.
- Pick a width: 30 to 40 columns for chat messages, 80 or more for wallpapers and READMEs.
- Adjust contrast until the subject stands out, and toggle invert for light backgrounds.
- Copy the text, or export PNG or HTML if the destination does not accept plain text.
Where Braille art works best
Braille art is popular in chat because most fonts give every Braille pattern the same width, even proportional fonts that would scramble normal ASCII art. That makes it a good fit for Discord messages, X posts, Twitch chat, YouTube comments and Steam profiles. The blank pattern U+2800 is not treated as whitespace by most apps, so empty areas survive copy and paste. Note that Braille art is decorative: screen readers announce the characters one by one, so add a short description when you post it.
Frequently asked questions
- Why does my Braille art look misaligned in some apps?
- Braille dots are aligned when every character has the same width. Most fonts draw all 256 Braille patterns at one width, but a few apps substitute a fallback font or trim leading blank cells. Paste into a code block, or keep a visible character at the start of each line, to stop that.
- How big can Braille art be for Discord?
- A standard Discord message holds 2,000 characters, line breaks included. At 40 columns that is roughly 45 rows, which is plenty for an avatar or emote-sized picture. Use the width slider to stay under the limit.
- Should I use invert?
- A raised dot is drawn in the text color. On a dark theme you usually want bright parts of the image to become dots, which is the default; on a light theme, toggle invert so the dark parts are dotted instead.