WhatsApp Makes Sending Bold, Italic Text Impossibly Easy

Every Tom, Dick, and Harry you know probably uses WhatsApp.

Whether it’s your work mates organizing a football game, your close relative trying to get you to visit home. The messaging app has come a long way since its creation in February 2009.

The little green squared app is now one of the most popular messaging app in the world, used by over 1.2 billion people worldwide. Despite its success, the Facebook-owned company has not become satisfied and has always kept the competition on its toes by releasing new features every few weeks.

WhatsApp this week has introduced new updates that makes sending rich text including bold, italics and strikethrough, which is easier to send than previous iterations.

That’s in part thanks to its simplicity, and the ease at which even the most tech-phobic users can get along with it. It’s this easy to UI which means a number of much more interesting features and tricks are hidden under the hood.

WhatsApp has dramatically simplified how users send bold, italic and strikethrough text

However, WhatsApp users could add the formatting options by using the following characters –

• Bold: Add an asterisk (*) before and after the word or phrase you want to embolden e.g. *hello*
• Italics: Add an underscore (_) before and after your chosen word or phrase e.g. _hello_
• Strikethrough: Add a tilde (~) before and after the word or phrase you want to strike a line through e.g. ~hello~

Starting with WhatsApp 2.17.148, the messenger incorporated new font options within the customizable floating text toolbar available on Android. Unfortunately, it was not instantly clear how to use the new options since WhatsApp does not announce any new additions anywhere within the app.

In order to change the font style, one needs to select the text, tap on the overflow button or three dots in the toolbar and choose from bold, italic, strikethrough or monospace options and it will change the style instantly.

This reduces the need for users to remember all the symbols required to make texting on WhatsApp interesting