WhatsApp Adds New Message Text Formatting Options: Bullets, Quotes, More

There’s good news for anyone who has been concerned that their WhatsApp messages aren’t clear enough or easily decipherable. Now, in addition to the existing bold, italic, strikethrough, and monospace formatting options, the world’s most popular messaging platform will let people create bulleted or numbered lists, underline words, highlight quoted text, and demarcate blocks of code. While some beta testers have reported seeing these options for a while, they are now available to all users across all platforms: Android, iOS, macOS, and WhatsApp Web.

While you can apply the older formatting options by highlighting text, long-pressing, and choosing Format from the popup context menu, the newer options aren’t as easily discoverable. Bulleted or numbered lists are created automatically when typing a hyphen or a number followed by a period before the text you want in your list. WhatsApp automatically handles indentation and will set up a new line for you when you hit Enter. To end a list and type regular text, simply hit Enter twice or backspace to erase the bullet or number.

Quote text can be highlighted by beginning a paragraph with the > character. This will indent text and mark it much like a forwarded email, so you can make it clear that you are forwarding or quoting text, and then add your own message to it for additional context. For inline code, text simply needs to be enclosed between two backtick (`) symbols. This is similar to the existing monospace option, but lets users visually demarcate snippets of code for easy reference. 

These options could be especially useful to those using WhatsApp in work settings. Commonly used chat apps aimed at workspace collaboration, such as Slack and Microsoft Teams, have allowed similar formatting options for some time now. Users exchanging long messages or entire documents as messages will now be able to demarcate sections and lists. Interestingly, there is still no text underline option. 

The new options were highlighted by Mark Zuckerberg in his personal WhatsApp channel, which reaches 16.1 million followers. They can be used by everyone, in private as well as group chats and channels. WhatsApp recently added interactive polls, one-time voice messages, and a new sticker maker, in addition to regularly improving privacy and security features.