F4D3R by HIGHBAUD

A late-90s AOL chat fader, recreated for 2026. Generates per-character color-faded text in three formats — period-accurate AOL HTML, modern Discord ANSI blocks, and plain styled Unicode that works anywhere.

What it does

The original AOL "fader" was an underground prog that wrapped every character of your chat in a <FONT COLOR="#XXXXXX"> tag, stepping the color around the spectrum so your messages dripped through a rainbow. AIM is shut down. This isn't.

F4D3R outputs three flavors:

• AOL HTML — classic per-char <FONT> soup with optional <B>/<I>/<U> and background colors. Paste into anything that renders HTML (email, old forums, rich-text chat).
• Discord ANSI — wraps the colored text in a ```ansi code block using the 8 colors Discord actually renders. Supports bold, underline, fg + bg.
• Plain Unicode — text transformed via Math Alphanumeric Symbols (𝐛𝐨𝐥𝐝, 𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘤, 𝓼𝓬𝓻𝓲𝓹𝓽, 𝔣𝔯𝔞𝔨𝔱𝔲𝔯, 𝙢𝙤𝙣𝙤, Ⓒⓘⓡⓒⓛⓔⓓ, ｆｕｌｌｗｉｄｔｈ, etc). Survives platforms that strip color — Twitter/X bios, Discord display names, Instagram.

Features

Group	Controls
Text Transforms	Case (None / lower / UPPER / Title / sPoNgEbOb / RaNdOm), 12 Unicode styles, Zalgo intensity, Scroller mode (width + lines)
Color	9 presets (Rainbow, Fire, Ocean, Forest, Sunset, Cotton Candy, Toxic, Vaporwave, AOL Classic), Spread, Shift, Background fade (None / Opposite hue / Reverse fade / Dark contrast), Per-word coloring
Format	Bold / Italic / Underline checkboxes, HTML font size 1–7
Output	Copy AOL HTML, Copy Discord ANSI, Copy Plain Unicode

Pipeline: case → unicode style → zalgo → scroller → color → emit. Everything composes.

Download

Grab the latest Windows EXE from Releases — standalone, no install needed.

Run from source

pip install Pillow
python fader.py

Requires Python 3.10+ and Pillow (used for the background image and splash fade).

Build your own EXE

pip install pyinstaller
pyinstaller --onefile --windowed --name F4D3R ^
  --icon icon.ico ^
  --add-data "background.png;." ^
  --add-data "splash.png;." ^
  fader.py

Output lands in dist/F4D3R.exe (~28 MB, single file, bundles Python + Pillow + the images).

License

MIT — see LICENSE.