Last year WhatsApp introduced rich formatting for messages which meant that users could now send messages in bold, italics, or strikeout. However to send these messages, you’d need to memorize the code for each of the formatting. This isn’t really that hard to do, but we guess for those who didn’t know about the feature in the first place would never figure it out.
The good news is that it looks like WhatsApp wants to fix that problem because in the latest beta for Android, WhatsApp appears to have added some shortcuts for users to format their text. All users have to do is highlight the word they want in the text box and in addition to the usual options of copying, cutting, or pasting, there will be an option to format text.
As you can see in the screenshots above, all users have to do is highlight the text they want and select the formatting option and they’ll be good to do. However given that sometimes highlighting text on smartphones, especially if you have big or fat fingers, can be rather finicky, we’re not sure if this will necessarily be faster than typing out the code itself.
Note that the codes will still continue to work, so this is really just another option for users to consider. It is currently available in the latest beta for the app so if you’re not running the beta, you’ll have to wait for the main release.