How to Create Invisible Text

Invisible text is text made of characters that exist but display nothing, so a name or a line looks empty. There are five ways to make one and only one of them works everywhere — this page covers all five, which to pick, and the three reasons a blank name stops working after you save it.

There are five ways to get an invisible character. Only one of them works everywhere. The other four are worth knowing for when you are not in a browser.

Making one is the easy part. The hard part is picking the right one, because they behave completely differently once a website saves them. That is where nearly everyone comes unstuck.

The five methods

1. Copy one from a generator. Open the invisible text generator, press Copy, paste it where you need it. This is the only method that works on a phone, and the only one where you can see what you are getting before you use it.
2. Type the code in Microsoft Word. Type 3164 and then press Alt and X together. Word turns the four characters you just typed into the character they name. This works in Word and in a few other editors, and nowhere else.
3. Hold Alt and type 0160 on Windows. You need the number keypad on the right of a full keyboard, not the row of numbers above the letters. This gives you a no-break space. It is easy to remember and it is the weakest of the five — see the warning below.
4. Use the character viewer. On Windows, open charmap. On a Mac, press Control, Command and Space. Search for the character by name, then copy it.
5. Write the code — only if you build websites or write software. In a web page, ㅤ produces one. In almost any programming language, "\u3164" does the same inside a piece of text.

Which character to use

“Invisible character” is not one thing. There are about a dozen, and the difference between them only shows up when a website saves your text.

Three of them cover almost every real use:

1. Hangul Filler is the general answer. The computer files it as a letter, not as blank space, so fields that refuse an empty value still accept it. Use it for usernames, display names and bios.
2. The Braille blank is the one to reach for when the first is rejected. It is filed as a symbol, which slips past a different set of rules. It is what makes an apparently empty WhatsApp message send.
3. The zero-width space takes up no room at all. It is the one for pushing two things together or breaking up a word without a visible gap. It is not a good choice for a blank name, because it has no width to fill one.

The full list, with what each one is for, is on the types of invisible characters page.

The three ways it goes wrong

Every failure people write in about is one of these three, and none of them is visible while it happens.

1. It was trimmed. The field removed the blank space at the start and the end before saving. This is the most common one by a long way, and it is why a name made only of spaces never survives.
2. It was rewritten. The site swapped your character for a plainer one. Hangul Filler is the usual casualty: it does not disappear, it quietly becomes a different character, and the difference matters if you paste it somewhere strict later.
3. It was rejected outright. Some fields only accept ordinary letters and digits. Discord’s unique @username and Minecraft names both work this way, and nothing invisible will ever go into one of them.

You do not have to guess which of the three happened. Paste the name into the survival checker and it runs all three against your own text and tells you which one is eating it.

Before you use it somewhere that matters

Some places charge for a name change, or only let you do it once every few months. Test first:

1. Paste it into a throwaway field — a message to yourself, a search box, a notes app.
2. Save, then reload the page and look at it as other people will see it.
3. If it survived there, it will almost certainly survive in the real field.

Common questions