How to strikethrough text on Instagram, step by step
- Write your text in the formatter Open the free Instagram text formatter and type or paste your caption, bio line or message. It works on a phone and on a computer, with no sign-up.
- Select the words and press S Select only what you want crossed out, for example the old plan in “I’ll post e̶v̶e̶r̶y̶ ̶d̶a̶y̶ when I have something to say”. Press S for strikethrough. B, I and U sit next to it if you want bold, italic or underline as well.
- Copy the formatted text Press Copy text. Leave Keep empty lines on if your caption has blank lines between paragraphs, so the gaps survive the paste.
- Paste it into Instagram Paste it into a new caption, a comment or a DM. For your bio, go to your profile, tap Edit profile, then Bio, paste, and save (Instagram’s own steps are in its help centre). The line stays on every phone and computer that shows it.
Why Instagram has no strikethrough button, and how the trick works
Instagram’s caption box, bio and comments take plain text only. There is no toolbar and no font menu: guides like Later’s bio guide say it plainly, Instagram doesn’t offer built-in font options.
Strikethrough gets around that because it isn’t formatting. Unicode, the standard every phone uses for text, has a character called the combining long stroke overlay (U+0336). It draws a line through the character in front of it. Put one after every letter and the whole word looks crossed out: s̶t̶r̶i̶k̶e̶t̶h̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶. Because the line is a character, it copies and pastes like any other text, into any app.
That also explains its quirks. Depending on the typeface, the line can be one smooth stroke or a row of short dashes, and an app that shows a different font may draw it slightly differently.
Where strikethrough works on Instagram
Strikethrough on Instagram, place by place
| Place | Works? | Good to know |
|---|---|---|
| Captions | Yes | Paste it in when you write the post, or edit the caption later. |
| Bio | Yes | The bio holds 150 characters. Cross out a word or two and keep your name and keywords plain. |
| Comments and replies | Yes | A crossed-out word in a reply reads as a joke or a correction. Keep it short. |
| DMs | Yes | Test a short message first if you’re writing to someone on an older phone. |
| Story text | Paste it in | Copy the formatted text, tap the text tool in your Story and paste. Check how the Story font draws the line. |
| Hashtags | No | Instagram reads a crossed-out hashtag as different characters, so it won’t work as a hashtag. |
Bio limit and Story paste from Later (June 2026) and NapoleonCat (April 2025).
When to use strikethrough, and when not to
Strikethrough says “this changed”. That’s its job, and it does it in very few characters:
- Show a change of mind. “I’ll start M̶o̶n̶d̶a̶y̶ today.” The crossed-out word is the story.
- Show an old and a new version. A plan, a price, a list of what you dropped. People see both at once.
- Make a self-aware joke. A crossed-out first thought, then the polite one, works because it reads like an aside.
- Mark what’s gone. A sold-out size or a closed date in a list, with the rest left plain.
And leave it out here:
- Hashtags, keywords and your name. Instagram search matches plain letters. A crossed-out word is different characters, so it can’t be found.
- Whole sentences. A long crossed-out line is hard to read on a phone, and the eye skips it.
- Anything people must understand. Screen readers can skip styled characters or read them out one by one. Scope, the disability charity, advises plain text whenever you want everyone to get the message.
Strikethrough not showing? Common problems
What went wrong, and the fix
| What you see | Why | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| The text pasted without the line | You copied the plain text, not the formatted version | Press Copy text in the formatter, then paste again |
| Gaps in the line between letters | The typeface draws each stroke separately | Normal. It still reads as crossed out. Try a shorter phrase if it bothers you |
| Little boxes instead of letters | A very old phone or app has no glyph for the character | Nothing to fix on your side. Current phones and browsers show it |
| Instagram removed your blank lines | Empty lines get stripped on paste | Leave Keep empty lines on before you copy |
What it looks like in a real post
Here the caption crosses out a long first try and keeps the short one. The carousel does the rest: one filler word per slide, a list, and a last slide with one ask.
If you make the carousel in aiCarousels, the caption comes written from your slides; paste it into the formatter to cross out a word or two. For a before and after of your own, start from the Do this, not that format in the ready-made carousel templates.
Other text styles on Instagram
The same copy-and-paste method gives you every other style Instagram doesn’t have:
- Italic for a quiet aside or a title: see how to italicize on Instagram.
- Underline for one line you want read first: see how to underline text in Instagram.
- Bold for the number or result that carries your caption: the Instagram bold text tool does it with B.
On TikTok, X and Threads the method is the same: the TikTok caption formatter, the X text formatter and the Threads formatter each have the S button too. More on posting to Instagram is in the Instagram section of our blog.
