You write your caption in neat paragraphs, you post it, and Instagram squashes it into one block. Paste it here, see how it will actually look, and copy a version that keeps its spacing. It works the same way for your bio.
How it will look
Do not retype anything after you paste it into Instagram. The spacing is held in place by characters you cannot see, and editing the caption in the app can knock them out.
Already posted a caption that came out wrong? You will have to edit it and paste the fixed version over the top. Instagram will not reflow it on its own.
When you post, Instagram tidies your caption up. It takes the spaces off the end of every line, and then it deletes any line that now has nothing on it. A blank line looks like nothing to it, so a blank line goes.
The way round it is to put something on the empty line that has no shape to it. The line then counts as having content, while still reading as a gap to anyone looking at it. That is the whole trick, and it is what every tool like this one does.
The old workaround was to type the caption in your Notes app and paste it across. That still works sometimes, but it breaks if you leave a stray space at the end of a line, or start or end a paragraph with an emoji, which is why it has a reputation for being unreliable.
A caption can run to 2,200 characters, but the feed folds everything after roughly 125 behind a more link. The preview folds it in the same place, so you can see whether your first line earns the tap.
Hashtags count towards the 2,200, and you are allowed 30. Both are tracked under the panes.
Want bold or italic in a caption as well? That is a different job, and the text style formatter does it. Writing for LinkedIn? Its fold is far harsher, and the LinkedIn text formatter draws that one. Every platform’s limits sit in one table on the character limits page.
A bio loses its blank lines exactly like a caption does, so the fix is the same. Write the bio on the left with a gap where you want one, press Copy caption, and paste it into Edit profile → Bio.
The difference is room. A bio stops at 150 characters, and every line break and every invisible spacer counts towards that. The counter under the panes shows the full total, so keep it at 150 or less. One gap between your intro and your link line usually does more than several.
Fancy letters for your name or bio come from the bold text generator and the cursive font generator. Paste the styled text here afterwards if you want the spacing too.
Because an empty line reads as nothing to it. Instagram trims the whitespace off each line as the caption is posted, and any line left with no content on it is dropped.
Braille Pattern Blank (U+2800) by default. Behind the "still losing your spacing" link you can switch to Invisible Separator (U+2063) or Hair Space (U+200A). Most tools pick one of the three and never say which, which is why a caption sometimes fails for no visible reason.
Yes, one character per blank line. The counter under the panes measures the finished caption rather than what you typed, so the number you see already includes them.
Not by looking. Someone who copies your caption gets them too, and a screen reader may pause at each one, but nothing is displayed.
No. These are ordinary Unicode characters, the same sort as an emoji. A readable caption tends to hold people longer than a wall of text, which is the only effect worth expecting.
Yes. Instagram treats blank lines the same way in all three places, and so does the fix. A bio holds only 150 characters, though, and each spacer uses one of them.
Another name for the same trick: an invisible character placed on an empty line so Instagram keeps the line. Spacer apps, caption spacers and bio spacers all do it this way. This one shows you the result before you copy it.
Usually. Scheduling tools have their own rules about which characters to strip, so if the spacing is gone after a scheduled post, open the "still losing your spacing" link and pick the next option down.
Press "Take the spacing out" and paste the caption in. It clears every spacer this tool knows of, not just the one currently selected, so a caption formatted somewhere else cleans up here as well.