Dot Art Generator (braille text art)

Make dot art ⣿⣶⣤⣀ from a shape, your own words or any picture, then copy and paste it into Discord, Twitch or X. Each braille character packs 8 dots, so it holds about four times the detail of plain ASCII art.

Draw from
Dot art

0 characters · Twitch limit 500 · Discord limit 2,000 (4,000 with Nitro)

Settings

One braille character = eight dots

Unicode reserves 256 characters, U+2800 to U+28FF, for every possible pattern of an 8-dot braille cell. Each dot is one bit: dot 1 adds 1, dot 2 adds 2, dot 3 adds 4, and so on up to dot 8, which adds 128. Add up the raised dots, add that to U+2800, and you have the character. Tap the dots.

U+281B

1 + 2 + 8 + 16 = 27

The odd numbering is history: classic braille had six dots (1–3 down the left, 4–6 down the right). Dots 7 and 8 were added underneath later for computer braille, so they got the highest bits. The generator above does exactly this for every 2×4 block of pixels in your picture.

Getting good dot art

  • Threshold first, then dithering. Move the threshold until the silhouette looks right, then switch dithering on for shading.
  • Logos and line art look sharpest with dithering off.
  • Dark mode apps: tick Invert so the lit dots form the subject.
  • For letters instead of pictures, use the ASCII banner generator; for photos with shading in plain ASCII, the image to ASCII converter.

Questions people ask

What is braille dot art?

Dot art (also called braille art) draws pictures with Unicode braille pattern characters, U+2800 to U+28FF. Each character is a 2-by-4 grid of dots, so a line of 40 characters is 80 dots wide – about four times the detail of ordinary ASCII art in the same space.

How do I copy and paste dot art into Discord or Twitch?

Press Copy and paste as normal. Braille characters are proportional-safe on most platforms because every pattern has the same width, so dot art usually survives without a code block. Twitch chat caps messages at 500 characters, so keep the width around 30 and height small.

Why do blank areas collapse or look uneven?

The empty braille cell U+2800 is a real character, but a few apps treat it as whitespace and trim it. Turn on "Use a dot for blanks" to replace empty cells with a single faint dot, which keeps the shape everywhere.

What does dithering do?

Dithering (Floyd–Steinberg error diffusion, published in 1976) spreads each pixel's rounding error to its neighbours, so grey areas become a mix of on and off dots. Without it, every pixel is simply above or below the threshold and gradients turn into flat blobs.

How do I write words in dot art?

Choose the Text tab and type up to four short lines. The words are drawn in a heavy sans-serif font and converted to braille dots; a width of 40–60 characters keeps most words readable. Shorter words look bolder.

Is this real braille that blind readers can use?

No. The characters are braille patterns, but the output is a picture, not text. A screen reader will announce it as a long string of braille symbols, so add a plain-language description when you post it.