Pixijs Scene Text

PixiJS has five text-rendering classes that cover different trade-offs between styling, performance, and animation. Text renders to a canvas for full CSS-style fidelity. BitmapText reads from a pre-generated atlas for cheap updates. HTMLText renders an HTML fragment via SVG <foreignObject> for rich markup. SplitText and SplitBitmapText wrap the first two classes and expose per-character, per-word, and per-line containers for animation.

Assumes familiarity with pixijs-scene-core-concepts. All text classes are leaf nodes; they cannot have children. Wrap multiple text instances in a Container to group them.

Quick Start

const text = new Text({
  text: "Hello PixiJS",
  style: {
    fontFamily: "Arial",
    fontSize: 36,
    fill: 0xffffff,
    stroke: { color: 0x4a1850, width: 5 },
    dropShadow: { color: 0x000000, blur: 4, distance: 6 },
  },
});

text.anchor.set(0.5);
text.x = app.screen.width / 2;
text.y = 40;

app.stage.addChild(text);

All text classes use options-object constructors; positional (string, style) from v7 is not supported.

Related skills: pixijs-scene-core-concepts (leaves, transforms), pixijs-assets (font loading), pixijs-performance (BitmapText tradeoffs), pixijs-color (FillInput for fill/stroke), pixijs-scene-graphics (gradients and patterns reused via FillInput).

Variants

When to use what

• "I need a styled static label" → Text. Use for titles, menus, dialog, error messages. See references/text.md.
• "I need a score or timer that updates every frame" → BitmapText. Updates only reposition quads; no canvas re-draw. See references/bitmap-text.md.
• "I need mixed formatting with `<b>`, `<i>`, `<br>`" → HTMLText. Real HTML/CSS rendering via SVG. See references/html-text.md.
• "I need inline colored tags like `<red>Warning:</red>`" → Text or HTMLText with tagStyles. Both support it.
• "I need to animate each character individually" → SplitText for short strings, SplitBitmapText for long strings or many instances. See references/split-text.md / references/split-bitmap-text.md.
• "I need CJK / Arabic / emoji-heavy text" → Text or HTMLText. BitmapText fails because the glyph set is too large for a single atlas.
• "I need a custom font" → Load via Assets.load({ src: 'font.woff2', data: { family: 'MyFont' } }) first, then set style.fontFamily: 'MyFont'. Works for Text and HTMLText.

Update cost comparison

"Free" = normal Container transform cost. "High" = new canvas draw + GPU upload. "Very low" = quad reposition only. Update strings that change per-frame only on BitmapText or SplitBitmapText.

Quick concepts

• Options-object constructors. Every v8 text class uses new Text({ text, style, ... }). The v7 (string, style) form is removed.
• `tagStyles`. Text and HTMLText support per-tag styling via style.tagStyles. Tags are only parsed when tagStyles has entries; otherwise < is treated literally.
• `BitmapFont.install`. Pre-generates an atlas before you create any BitmapText. Without install, the first BitmapText with a new fontFamily generates the atlas lazily.
• MSDF fonts. Multi-channel Signed Distance Field fonts stay sharp at any size. Generate with external tools (e.g., msdf-bmfont), load via Assets.load('font.fnt'). Requires import 'pixi.js/text-bitmap' in custom builds.

Common Mistakes

[HIGH] Updating Text.text every frame

Wrong:

app.ticker.add(() => {
  scoreText.text = `Score: ${score}`;
});

Correct:

const scoreText = new BitmapText({ text: "Score: 0", style });
app.ticker.add(() => {
  scoreText.text = `Score: ${score}`;
});

Every Text update re-rasterizes the whole string. Use BitmapText for any value that changes per-frame.

[HIGH] Positional constructor args

Wrong:

const text = new Text("Hello", { fontSize: 24 });

Correct:

const text = new Text({ text: "Hello", style: { fontSize: 24 } });

v8 removed the (string, style) form. All text classes use options objects.

[HIGH] Not importing pixi.js/text-bitmap in custom builds

Under skipExtensionImports: true or aggressive tree-shaking, Assets.load('font.fnt') silently returns raw data unless you add import 'pixi.js/text-bitmap'. The standard import { ... } from 'pixi.js' bundle includes the extension.

[MEDIUM] Adding children to a text instance

Every text class sets allowChildren = false. Wrap in a Container to group text with other content.

API Reference

• Text
• TextStyle
• BitmapText
• BitmapFont
• HTMLText
• HTMLTextStyle
• SplitText
• SplitBitmapText
• AbstractSplitText
• AbstractText