WhatsApp Message Formatter Guide
Format a WhatsApp message with bold, italic, strikethrough, monospace and lists, with a live preview.
A short companion for WhatsApp Message Formatter: when it is useful, what it expects, and what to check before using the result.
What it does
Write a WhatsApp message without remembering which character makes what bold. Select some text and press a button to wrap it, or press a list button to prefix each line, then watch the preview update to show how the message will look. Bold, italic, strikethrough and monospace are all supported, and the raw marker characters stay in the text so you can copy it straight into the chat box.
Use the tool
Open WhatsApp Message Formatter, add the input the tool asks for, run it, and check the output before using it elsewhere.
Input and output
- Input: text.
- Output: text.
- Category: Text.
Privacy and processing
Processing happens locally in your browser. This tool does not upload the input to ilham.dev.
Questions
Which markers does WhatsApp use?
An asterisk on each side for bold, an underscore for italic, a tilde for strikethrough and three backticks for monospace. They only take effect when the character touches text with no space, which is why the wrap button adds them snugly.
Do the buttons need a selection?
No. With nothing selected the markers are inserted as a pair and the caret is placed between them, so you can type the text afterwards. With a selection the markers go around it.
Can the preview differ from WhatsApp?
Slightly. The page renders the markers as HTML for a quick look, while WhatsApp applies its own rules, so an unusual nesting of markers may look a little different in the app. The copy button always gives you the plain text with markers.
Related guide
For broader background, see Text Formatting and Cleanup.