Text Style Studio

Preview Text

Insert PICO-8 Glyph Preview Background

Styles

Underline Hollow
Wide Tall Stripey

Pinball mode

Spacing

Width (x)

Height (y)

Colors

Foreground
Background
Outline

Outline Options

Custom Color Palette

Apply a Custom Palette

Export Style Settings

Generated Code

text_style = ""
        string = "i ♥ pico-8"
        print(text_style .. string)

Copy Style

Test in PICO-8 Education Edition

Select Color

Insert PICO-8 Glyph

Custom Palette

Paste a Color Palette Studio share link or code:

Apply Reset to Default

Preview Text

Text Input Field

You may use this field to alter the text displayed in the PICO-8 font preview to test specific words, numbers, or symbols with the different styles applied.

Letter Case

PICO-8's default font makes lowercase letters appear uppercase, while true uppercase is made smaller and called "puny-font" which you can turn on in PICO-8 with Ctrl+P.

Insert Glyphs

PICO-8 offers 26 unique icons as text characters (P8SCII) that you can print in your game or even use in your code. We provided you with an easy way to select and insert these glyphs into the preview area. You can get creative with applying text styles to these to produce an even wider variety of symbols.

Click the text input field where you want to add a glyph, then click the "Insert PICO-8 Glyph" button to choose which glyph to add to the preview text.

Text Style Options

Underline

code: \^u

Draw an extra line under each character at the place of text height setting (see "Spacing" options). It uses the foreground color.

Warning: when enabling both Underline and Wide settings, the preview does not match the actual PICO-8 output, where the underline will appear as dashed lines.

Hollow

code: \^o!

Draw only the outline around characters, using the foreground color, and leave the actual characters empty. This will disable the Outline Color option, but you may still adjust the Outline Options to control how much of the hollow outline is visible.

Wide

code: \^w

Double the width of each character printed. The default is 4 pixels wide for most characters, so enabling Wide will make them 8 pixels.

Tall

code: \^t

Double the height of each character printed. The default is 6 pixels tall for most characters, so enabling Tall will make them 12 pixels.

Stripey

code: \^=

(only available if Wide and/or Tall enabled)

This setting carves either striped rows, columns, or both through each character of your text.

Pinball

code: \^p

(button unnecessary)

When Wide, Tall, and Stripey are all enabled, Pinball is enabled automatically which does the same styling as all 3.

Character Spacing

Width

code: \^x

Increase or decrease the width of each character printed. The default is 4 pixels wide for most characters. The minimum is 0 and maximum 15.

This does not change the characters themselves, only the space that each character occupies.

Height

code: \^y

Increase or decrease the height of each character printed. The default is 6 pixels tall. The minimum is 0 and maximum 15.

This does not change the characters themselves, only the space that each character occupies.

Warning: We have done our best to provide an accurate preview, but when altering the character spacing while also enabling styles such as underline and outline, there may be some minor differences to how PICO-8 actually prints.

Color Options

Foreground Color

code: \^f

Choose the color of the text. This will also apply to the underline and the hollow outline if that is enabled.

Background Color

code: \^#

Choose the color of the background to enable a colored rectangle behind your text or leave it disabled. The background rectangle will extend the full height and length of the text string, which includes the Spacing settings.

Outline Color

code: \^o

Choose the color of the outline to enable it, or leave it disabled. Once enabled, the Outline Options may be adjusted to set the direction of the outline around your text.

Outline Color is disabled when the Hollow setting is enabled because Hollow will use the Foreground color. However, the Outline Options are still available for the Hollow settings.

Outline Options

Arrow Buttons

code: (00-ff)

Click on any of the 8 direction arrows to enable or disable the outline drawn in that direction around each pixel of your text. The code uses a two-digit hexadecimal number at the end of the outline code.

Center "A" Button

Click on the center button surrounded by arrows to fully enable or fully disable all buttons.

Warning: If you have the outline enabled but don't see it in the preview, all arrows may be turned off, or the outline color is the same as the background color. The default preview window is black, but will change to be dark blue if you have selected black as your outline color.