Bubble Text Generator

"Bubble Text 12" in all 5 styles

Converted by this tool when the page was built, with whole numbers switched on. Where a style had to change or skip something, the note says what.

• Bubbles Ⓑⓤⓑⓑⓛⓔ Ⓣⓔⓧⓣ ⑫
• Filled bubbles 🅑🅤🅑🅑🅛🅔 🅣🅔🅧🅣 ⓬ 8 lowercase letters shown as capitals
• Squares 🄱🅄🄱🄱🄻🄴 🅃🄴🅇🅃 12 8 lowercase letters shown as capitals; no form for 1, 2
• Filled squares 🅱🆄🅱🅱🅻🅴 🆃🅴🆇🆃 12 8 lowercase letters shown as capitals; no form for 1, 2
• Brackets 🄑⒰⒝⒝⒧⒠ 🄣⒠⒳⒯ ⑿

Five styles from three corners of Unicode

Bubble text is not a font. Each bubbled letter is a separate character that comes with its circle already drawn, which is why it survives being pasted somewhere that gives you no formatting at all. Those characters were added to Unicode at different times for different reasons, and the reasons explain every gap you will run into.

White bubbles and brackets: numbered lists

The outlined circles and the bracketed letters live in a block called Enclosed Alphanumerics, part of Unicode since its early versions. They came over from East Asian character sets, where ① ② ③ and ⑴ ⑵ ⑶ were everyday ways of numbering items in a document. Because they were built for lists, they are thorough: white bubbles have every capital, every lowercase letter and every digit including zero.

Filled bubbles and squares: television

The filled circles, the outlined squares and the filled squares arrived in 2010, mostly from the standards Japanese broadcasters use for on-screen programme guides, where boxed letters and abbreviations label what is showing — the same block still contains squared SD, HV and PPV. A television guide had no reason to box a lowercase letter, so none were ever made. Those three styles are capitals only.

Circled numbers past twenty: a third block

Circled 21 to 50 sit somewhere else again, in the block for enclosed CJK letters and months, alongside circled ideographs used in Chinese, Japanese and Korean documents. They are the reason white bubbles can put a number as large as 50 inside one circle.

What each style is missing

Most bubble generators let you discover the holes by pasting and squinting. This one tells you on each result. The short version:

• Bubbles — complete. Capitals, lowercase, 0 to 9, and whole numbers up to 50.
• Filled bubbles — capitals only, digits 0 to 9, whole numbers up to 20.
• Squares — capitals only, and no digits at all.
• Filled squares — capitals only, no digits, and four letters that double as emoji.
• Brackets — capitals and lowercase, 1 to 9 but no zero, whole numbers up to 20.

Where a style has no lowercase, the tool uses the capital rather than leaving the letter plain, because a half-bubbled word looks broken while an all-capital one just looks emphatic. The badge on each card says how many letters it changed. Where a style has no form at all — digits in squares, a bracketed zero — the character stays as typed and is listed underneath.

Two-digit numbers in one bubble

Type 12 into most bubble generators and you get ①②, two separate circles. Unicode has a single ⑫, and with Numbers as one bubble ticked this tool uses it. The ranges each style supports are:

Every whole number each style can enclose

• Bubbles ⓪ ① ② ③ ④ ⑤ ⑥ ⑦ ⑧ ⑨ ⑩ ⑪ ⑫ ⑬ ⑭ ⑮ ⑯ ⑰ ⑱ ⑲ ⑳ ㉑ ㉒ ㉓ ㉔ ㉕ ㉖ ㉗ ㉘ ㉙ ㉚ ㉛ ㉜ ㉝ ㉞ ㉟ ㊱ ㊲ ㊳ ㊴ ㊵ ㊶ ㊷ ㊸ ㊹ ㊺ ㊻ ㊼ ㊽ ㊾ ㊿ 0 to 50, each a single character.
• Filled bubbles ⓿ ❶ ❷ ❸ ❹ ❺ ❻ ❼ ❽ ❾ ❿ ⓫ ⓬ ⓭ ⓮ ⓯ ⓰ ⓱ ⓲ ⓳ ⓴ 0 to 20, each a single character.
• Brackets ⑴ ⑵ ⑶ ⑷ ⑸ ⑹ ⑺ ⑻ ⑼ ⑽ ⑾ ⑿ ⒀ ⒁ ⒂ ⒃ ⒄ ⒅ ⒆ ⒇ 1 to 20, each a single character.

Numbers beyond those ranges fall back to one bubble per digit, and so do numbers with a leading zero, so 07 stays as two characters. Untick the option if you want every number broken into digits for a consistent look.

Symbols can be circled too

Mathematics needed circled operators long before anyone wanted bubble text: ⊕ for a special kind of addition, ⊗ for a kind of product, ⊙ for multiplying element by element. With Circle + − × ÷ = too ticked, the white bubble style uses them, so a+b=c comes out with every character in a circle.

Be aware they were drawn for equations, not for matching letters. In many fonts they are a little smaller or sit a little lower than the bubbled letters beside them. Check the result before you rely on it.

When letters turn into emoji

Four filled squares have a second life. 🅰 and 🅱 are the blood-type emoji, 🅾 is blood type O, and 🅿 is the parking sign. Many phones draw these in red as colour emoji, and a word written in filled squares then has some letters in black and some in bright red tiles.

Unicode provides a fix of sorts: an invisible character, variation selector 15, which placed after a symbol asks the device to show the plain text version. Tick Ask for text, not emoji and the tool adds one after each of those four letters. It is a request rather than a command — most systems honour it, some do not — and it costs one extra character each, which matters if you are close to a length limit.

Spacing between bubbles

Enclosed characters are drawn edge to edge, and in some fonts neighbouring circles touch or overlap. Space between bubbles puts an ordinary space between each one. It reads more cleanly as a heading, at the cost of making word breaks harder to see; for a single word it is usually the better look.

Which style to use

They look like five variations on one idea, but they suit different jobs.

• A name or a short phrase — white bubbles. They keep lowercase, so the word still has its shape, and they render on more devices than any other style here.
• One word that should shout — filled bubbles or filled squares. Capitals only, which suits a single emphatic word and looks heavy across a sentence.
• A label or a tag — outlined squares, which read like keys on a keyboard or stamps on a box.
• A list — brackets, or white bubbles with whole numbers, which is what these characters were made for in the first place.

Whichever you pick, try it on a second device before you use it somewhere that matters. The enclosed blocks are split across fonts, and a style that looks crisp on your phone can be a size larger, or partly in boxes, on someone else's.

Numbered steps where there are no lists

The most practical use for bubble numbers has nothing to do with decoration. Captions, comments, bios and most messaging apps have no numbered lists, and "1." at the start of a line is easy to lose in a block of text. A line that starts ① stands out, takes one character, and cannot be mistaken for part of the sentence.

Type your steps with ordinary numbers, tick Numbers as one bubble, and copy the white bubble version. Steps up to twenty work in every numbered style; up to fifty in white bubbles. Leave the letters plain by typing only the numbers in the box, or bubble the whole line if you want the heading look.

Accents, punctuation and everything else

The enclosed blocks only ever covered the 26 basic Latin letters and the digits. There is no circled é, no bubbled ß, no squared Greek or Cyrillic. Rather than guess, the tool leaves those characters exactly as typed and lists them under each result, so a name like Zoë comes out with two letters in bubbles and the ë plain — and you can see that before you paste it.

Punctuation, spaces and emoji pass straight through untouched, except for the handful of symbols the white bubble style can circle when you ask it to. That keeps sentences readable: the commas and full stops are still ordinary commas and full stops, sitting between the bubbles where you put them.

Turning bubbles back into text

The reverse switch takes bubble text from anywhere — this tool, another generator, a bio you copied — and maps every enclosed letter and number back to an ordinary character. That includes circled numbers up to 50, so ㊷ comes back as 42 rather than an unknown symbol. Letters that were capitals-only come back as capitals; there is no way to know they were typed in lowercase.

Where bubble text works, and its costs

It pastes almost anywhere text is accepted: bios, captions, comments, display names, chat. Usernames and handles are the exception, since most platforms restrict those to plain letters and digits.

Two costs are worth knowing. Nobody will find it by searching, because Ⓑ is not B. And a screen reader announces each character as a symbol — "circled B, circled U" — rather than reading the word, so anything a blind visitor needs to understand is better left plain. Bubble a heading or a word for emphasis; keep your name and anything important readable.

Bubble text versus bubble letters

The puffy, rounded lettering on birthday banners and in graffiti is also called bubble letters, and it is a different thing: a typeface, or a way of drawing. You cannot paste it, because it is a style rather than a set of characters. If you need letters to print and trace, look for a bubble font in a design program. If you need bubbles that travel as text, this is the right tool.

Related tools

The Fancy Text Generator shows bubble styles next to 58 others, from bold and script to wide text. The Small Text Generator makes tiny letters in small caps, superscript and subscript, and the Username Generator builds a handle worth putting in bubbles in the first place.

Common questions

How do I type bubble letters?

Type normally into the box above and copy whichever style you like. Each letter is swapped for a real Unicode character that already has its circle or square, so the bubbles survive being pasted into a bio, a caption or a chat where you cannot choose a font.

Why are my lowercase letters coming out as capitals?

Because filled bubbles, outlined squares and filled squares only exist as capitals. Unicode took them from Japanese broadcasting standards, which never needed a lowercase letter in a box. Rather than leave those letters plain, the tool uses the capital and tells you how many it changed. White bubbles and brackets have a full lowercase set.

Can I put a two-digit number in one bubble?

Yes, up to 50 in white bubbles and up to 20 in filled bubbles and brackets. With Numbers as one bubble ticked, 12 becomes ⑫ rather than ①②. Larger numbers fall back to one bubble per digit.

Why do some letters turn into red emoji?

The filled-square A, B, O and P double as emoji — the blood types and the parking sign — and some phones draw them in colour. Tick Ask for text, not emoji and the tool adds an invisible request for the plain version after each one. Most devices honour it; a few ignore it.

How do I turn bubble text back into normal text?

Switch to Turn bubbles back into text and paste it in. Every enclosed letter and number from all five styles is mapped back to an ordinary character, so the text can be searched and edited again.

Is this the same as bubble letters for drawing?

No. Puffy, outlined bubble lettering on posters and in graffiti is a typeface or a drawing style. This tool produces characters you can paste as text. If you want letters to trace or draw, you need a bubble font in a design program instead.

Does anything I type get uploaded?

No. The conversion runs in your browser and nothing is stored.