ascii.today

What is ASCII Today?

ASCII Today is a browser-based generator that turns short text into large ASCII-art lettering for use in plain-text contexts. Its stated purpose is to “spruce up your code comments and readmes,” so it is aimed at developers who want a visually distinct title without leaving the text-only world of source files and Markdown. The page describes it as “a super-fast ASCII title generator,” and it is credited to Lokesh Dhakar, with the code available on GitHub. ASCII Today

What you can use it for

• README headers: A block of ASCII lettering at the top of a repository’s README gives a project a banner-like identity while remaining plain text.
• Code comments: Section dividers and module titles become easier to spot when rendered as large letters.
• Terminal output and scripts: Tools that print a banner on startup can use ASCII lettering instead of an image.
• Plain-text documents and notes: Anywhere a heading needs emphasis but rich formatting is unavailable.

Who it suits

It is most useful to developers, maintainers and technical writers who work in environments where plain text is the common denominator: Git repositories, source files, terminal programs and text-based documentation. Anyone who needs a graphical logo or styled typography should look elsewhere, because ASCII art is constrained to characters and monospaced alignment.

Trade-offs to keep in mind

ASCII lettering depends on a monospaced font and consistent character widths to line up correctly. In proportional fonts, on narrow screens, or inside rendered Markdown that wraps lines, the alignment can break. Large banners also consume vertical space and can dominate a file, so they work best for top-level titles rather than repeated subheadings. Because the output is characters rather than an image, it remains searchable, copyable and version-control friendly — a genuine advantage over screenshots.

A practical next step: generate a title for your project name, paste it into a scratch file, and preview it in the exact font and width where it will live before committing it. If it holds its shape at that width, it will usually hold up in the README or comment block too.

How do I create an ASCII title for my code comments?

Use an ASCII art generator like ASCII Today to turn a plain word or phrase into a large, banner-style title made from keyboard characters. You type your text, the tool renders it as block letters, and you copy the result into a code comment or README.

A quick workflow

1. Decide the exact text you want — usually a short project name, a file or module name, or a section label like TESTS or CONFIG.
2. Paste it into the generator and preview the result.
3. Copy the rendered block and paste it at the top of the file or section, inside your language's comment syntax.
4. Keep each line prefixed with the comment marker so the whole banner stays commented out.

For example, a banner in a shell script uses #, in JavaScript // or /* */, and in Python #:

#  ___  ____  ____  __  __
# / _ \|  _ \|  _ \|  \/  |
#| |_| | |_) | | | | |\/| |
#|  _  |  __/| |_| | |  | |
#|_| |_|_|   |____/|_|  |_|

Practical trade-offs

• Width matters. Long phrases produce very wide banners that wrap or overflow in narrow editors and terminals. Two or three short words usually look best.
• Monospace only. ASCII titles rely on a fixed-width font. They look right in code editors and terminals, but misalign in proportional fonts or some rendered Markdown views.
• Use them sparingly. A banner at the top of a main file or a major section is helpful. Repeating one before every small function adds noise and makes diffs harder to read.
• Mind the diff. Once inserted, the banner is just text; editing it by hand is tedious, so finalize your wording before pasting.

If you want a different style — outlined, slanted, or filled — try another generator and compare. TAAG offers many fonts, and FSymbols covers a broader range of text-art styles. The right choice is the one whose width and density fit the file where it will live.

Can I customize the font and style of the generated ASCII art?

Yes, within limits. ASCII Today is built around generating text banners from a set of pre-drawn ASCII fonts rather than letting you design a typeface yourself. You choose a font style from the available options, and the generator renders your title in that style. So "customization" here means picking among the offered styles, not editing stroke widths, letterforms, or kerning.

What you can typically control

• The text itself — your title, project name, or comment header.
• The font style — different ASCII typefaces produce very different results: blocky and heavy, thin and minimal, slanted, or decorative.
• The output format — you copy the rendered result as plain text and paste it into a README, source file header, or code comment.

What you cannot do

• Design a new ASCII font or modify an existing one inside the tool.
• Fine-tune spacing, alignment, or per-character styling.
• Expect proportional or variable-width typography — ASCII art is fixed-width by nature.

Choosing a style

Practical next step

Paste your longest expected title into the generator and test it at your target width — a 100-column terminal, a GitHub README, or a code comment block. Wide banners that look great on a desktop screen often wrap badly in narrow editors or on mobile GitHub views, so check the wrap before committing it. If you need a specific look the tool does not offer, ASCII Today's output is plain text, so you can hand-adjust spacing afterward in your editor.

Is ASCII Today free to use, and can I use the output commercially?

ASCII Today presents itself as a free, browser-based ASCII title generator, and nothing on its page suggests a paid tier, account requirement or license fee. The page simply offers the tool and credits its maker, Lokesh Dhakar, with code on GitHub. So the practical answer is: using the generator costs nothing.

Commercial use of the output is a separate question, and it turns on what you actually generate. ASCII art made from plain characters is generally not something the tool can claim rights over — the characters themselves aren't protectable, and a short stylized title is unlikely to carry meaningful copyright. The realistic risks come from elsewhere:

• Trademarks. If your ASCII title reproduces a brand name or logo-like wordmark, commercial use can raise trademark issues regardless of how it was rendered.
• Fonts and styles. The generator's letterforms are built from ASCII characters, so there's no font license to worry about — unlike downloading a decorative typeface.
• The site's own code. Reusing or redistributing the generator's source is governed by whatever license its GitHub repository carries, which is a different matter from using the images it produces.

A quick way to decide

A sensible next step: generate the title, then ask whether the words or marks inside it belong to someone else. If it's your own project name or generic wording, commercial use is straightforward. If it echoes a company or product you don't own, treat it like any other branded asset and get permission or pick different text.

How does ASCII Today compare to other ASCII art generators?

ASCII Today is a single-purpose tool: it turns a short piece of text into a large ASCII banner you can paste into code comments, README files, terminal output or documentation. Its focus is speed and simplicity rather than a broad art toolkit, so it suits developers who want a heading in seconds and don't want to install anything. The page describes it as a "super-fast ASCII title generator" for sprucing up code comments and readmes.

How it differs from typical ASCII art generators

The practical difference is intent. If you already know the words you want — a project name, a section header, a file banner — a title generator gets you there faster than a general art tool. If you want a picture of a cat or a detailed logo, ASCII Today is the wrong category of tool entirely.

Choosing between them

Pick a title generator when the text is fixed and the job is presentation. Pick a broader ASCII art tool when the content itself is the creative part. Many developers keep both: one for headers, another for decorative art.

A concrete example: you are adding a banner to the top of a Python module so the file is scannable when someone opens it. Typing the module name into ASCII Today and pasting the result above the imports takes less time than converting an image or hand-aligning characters. For a logo on a personal site, you would instead reach for a converter that accepts an image.

Other places to look

• ASCII Art for a wider collection of art and text styles.
• Patorjk's ASCII Art Generator for a long-standing text-to-banner tool with many fonts.
• FSymbols for text styling and symbol-based decoration beyond plain ASCII.

If you want to compare fairly, test each with the same short string — your project or file name — and judge on how readable the result stays in a monospaced editor, how many characters wide it becomes, and whether the style matches the surrounding code. A banner that wraps awkwardly in a narrow terminal or a diff view is worse than no banner at all.

Can I use ASCII Today offline or integrate it into my own project?

ASCII Today is a browser-based title generator, so the short answer is: you can use it offline only if you first save the page and its assets, and there is no documented API or embed option for integrating it into another project. The site itself is a single-purpose tool that turns text into large ASCII-art headings, intended for code comments and README files.

Offline use

Because the generator runs in the browser, the practical route to offline use is to load the page once while online, then save it (for example, as a complete webpage) and open the saved copy later. This works for occasional use, but it is a manual workaround rather than an advertised offline mode, and any future changes to the site will not be reflected in your saved copy.

Project integration

The page presents itself simply as a generator hosted by its author, Lokesh Dhakar, with the code noted as available on GitHub. That points to the realistic integration path: rather than calling ASCII Today as a service, you would adapt or reimplement the ASCII font rendering yourself. If you only need a handful of headings, generating them once and pasting the output into your README or source comments is simpler than wiring anything into a build.

Choosing an approach

If your goal is repeatable, automated headings, treat ASCII Today as a design reference and check the project's GitHub source for how the letterforms are defined. That gives you something you can adapt, whereas the hosted page is best suited to one-off copying.

A useful next step: generate one sample title, paste it into your target file, and check how it renders in a monospaced font at your editor's typical width before committing to it. For alternatives with the same purpose, see Patorjk's Text to ASCII Art Generator and FSymbols.