WhatsApp Text
Formatter

These are the styles WhatsApp's Help Center lists for messages. Put the symbols directly against the text, with no space between a symbol and the word it wraps.

For a quick bit of formatting you do not need a tool. Type the symbols yourself, or select the text and let the app add them for you. The Help Center describes these shortcuts:

• iPhone: double tap the text you typed, tap Format, then choose Bold, Italic, Strikethrough or Monospace.
• Android: tap and hold the text, tap the three dots (More), then choose Bold, Italic, Strikethrough or Monospace.
• WhatsApp Web and desktop: double click the text, then choose Bold, Italic, Strikethrough or Inline code.

This formatter is handy when you are preparing a longer message, a list or a template you will reuse. You get a preview, a style is applied to every line you select, spaces stay outside the symbols, and tapping a button a second time removes the style. To send the same message from a link or QR code, paste it into our WhatsApp link generator, which handles the URL encoding for you.

The Help Center describes each style on its own and does not cover combining them. People commonly wrap one pair of symbols inside another, for example *_bold and italic_*, and the preview here follows that idea. Whether a nested style shows up is up to WhatsApp, so check it in a chat with yourself.

The Help Center article on formatting lists no underline, spoiler or font-size option either. If a site offers underlined or tiny WhatsApp text, it is using special Unicode characters, the same trick as the fonts mode above.

When a message stays plain, one of these is usually the reason:

• A space inside the symbols. * hello* stays as typed, *hello* works.
• Only one side, or two different symbols. Each style needs the same symbol before and after the text.
• Lookalike characters. Asterisks, tildes or backticks pasted from a document or website can be different characters. Retype them in WhatsApp.
• A pair split across lines. The Help Center examples keep each pair on one line, so do the same.
• An older app. Lists, quotes and inline code came later than bold, italic and strikethrough. If they stay plain, update WhatsApp and try again.

WhatsApp does not publish its exact parsing rules, so treat any preview, ours included, as a close sketch and not a promise.

The fonts mode swaps normal letters for Unicode characters that look like bold, script, old English, small caps or circled letters. Because they are text, you can paste them into a chat. They are not fonts, so WhatsApp is not changing how it draws your message.

There is a price. A phone that lacks a character shows an empty box, a screen reader may read each letter by its Unicode name or skip it, and a contact searching for a word will not find it if you wrote it in styled letters. Keep names, prices and anything people need to read aloud or search for in plain text, and use styled letters for a short decorative phrase. The same applies to our Instagram fonts generator.