Text

The main type of content in Lemmy is text which can be formatted with Markdown. Refer to the table below for supported formatting rules. The Lemmy user interface also provides buttons for formatting, so it's not necessary to remember all of it. You can also follow the interactive CommonMark tutorial to get started.

TypeOr… to Get
*Italic*_Italic_Italic
**Bold**__Bold__Bold
# Heading 1Heading 1
=========

Heading 1

## Heading 2Heading 2
---------
Heading 2
[Link](http://a.com)[Link][1]
⋮
[1]: http://b.org		Link
![Image](http://url/a.png)![Image][1]
⋮
[1]: http://url/b.jpg		Markdown
> Blockquote
Blockquote
* List
* List
* List		- List
- List
- List
_ List
_ List
* List
1. One
2. Two
3. Three		1) One
2) Two
3) Three		1. One
2. Two
3. Three
Horizontal Rule
---		Horizontal Rule
***		Horizontal Rule
`Inline code` with backticksInline code with backticks
```
# code block
print '3 backticks or'
print 'indent 4 spaces'
```		····# code block
····print '3 backticks or'
····print 'indent 4 spaces'		# code block
print '3 backticks or'
print 'indent 4 spaces'
::: spoiler hidden or nsfw stuff
a bunch of spoilers here
:::
hidden or nsfw stuff

a bunch of spoilers here

Some ~subscript~ textSome subscript text
Some ^superscript^ textSome superscript text

CommonMark Tutorial

Images and video

Lemmy also allows sharing of images and videos. To upload an image, go to the Create post page and click the little image icon under the URL field. This allows you to select a local image. If you made a mistake, a popup message allows you to delete the image. The same image button also allows uploading of videos in .gif format. Instead of uploading a local file, you can also simply paste the URL of an image or video from another website.

Note that this functionality is not meant to share large images or videos, because that would require too many server resources. Instead, upload them on another platform like PeerTube or Pixelfed, and share the link on Lemmy.

Torrents

Since Lemmy doesn't host large videos or other media, users can share files using BitTorrent links. In BitTorrent, files are shared not by a single user, but by many users at the same time. This makes file sharing efficient, fast, and reliable, as long as several sources are sharing the files.

Lemmy supports posting torrent magnet links (links that start with magnet:) in the post URL field, or as markdown links within comments.

With this, Lemmy can serve as an alternative to centralized media-centric services like YouTube and Spotify.

How to watch Torrents

Beginner

To easily stream videos and audio on Lemmy, you can use any of the following apps. After clicking on a torrent link in Lemmy, a dialog will pop up asking you to open the link in the app.

Expert

For those who would like to help share files, you can use any of the following torrent clients.

If you'd like, you can also set up a media server to view this content on any device. Some good options are: