Glitch Text Generator
Glitch or Zalgo text piles stacks of Unicode combining marks above, below and through each character to make a line look corrupted. It is the standard visual for “haunted” or “virus” memes and horror-themed streams. This tool runs your text through a configurable number of combining diacritics — from mild jitter to full-screen chaos.
How to glitch text
-
1
Type or paste
Any text — letters, numbers, spaces.
-
2
Set intensity
Number of combining marks stacked per character (1 = subtle, 6 = full Zalgo).
-
3
Generate
Each base glyph receives random combining diacritics chosen from Unicode's combining marks block.
-
4
Copy and paste
The output works in any app that accepts Unicode.
What is Zalgo text, really?
It is not a font. It is plain text plus combining characters from the Unicode Combining Diacritical Marks block (U+0300–U+036F) and its supplements. Each mark stacks above or below the previous glyph and renders regardless of font family.
Intensity levels
| Intensity | Marks per glyph | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Subtle shimmer, still readable |
| 2–3 | 2–3 | Classic “glitch” look |
| 4–6 | 4–6 | Full Zalgo — glyphs overflow line height |
Where it renders and where it breaks
- Renders: Twitter, Discord, Reddit, YouTube descriptions, Notion, VS Code.
- Breaks: form fields that normalise Unicode, SMS (gets mangled to ASCII), printed PDFs.
- Accessibility: screen readers read the underlying character plus each mark (“latin small letter a; combining grave accent; combining tilde”). Do not use glitch text in body copy meant to be read aloud.
Tip: contain the damage
Heavy Zalgo can overflow into the line above and below, which breaks page layouts. For Twitter bios or headings keep intensity at 1–2; save the full chaos for short horror posts or username flair.
Frequently Asked Questions
Combining marks stack vertically without affecting line height. Once you stack 5+ marks, characters protrude into neighbouring lines. Layouts with tight line-height suffer the most.
It is valid Unicode, so it passes every spam filter. Some platforms may strip it as “abusive formatting” in usernames; content-wise it is fine.
Most emoji are single code points without combining behaviour, so the marks float near but not on the glyph. Expect uneven results — stick to Latin text for predictable Zalgo.
No — the glitching is done in the browser and nothing you type is sent out.