Lately, Meta has encountered fierce competition in the instant messaging market. Even with WhatsApp’s encrypted messenger becoming more and more popular, the firm is still under pressure to change. Meta has been forced to step up as competitors enhance their own apps with new features. For instance, typical text formatting options like bold and italics were made available to users of Signal, an instant messaging applications that also has end-to-end encryption, in 2023. WhatsApp had already added this functionality in 2016. With the addition of advanced formatting options, Meta is now moving forward.

The CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, stated on WhatsApp that the platform’s users will soon have access to advanced text formatting (via WABetaInfo/Twitter). In his update, Zuckerberg demonstrated the new formatting options for text, including block quotes, numbered lists, bulleted lists, and inline code.

The additions to the previous releases’ bold, italic, strikethrough, and monospace text effects capabilities are the new additions. While some of the new features are more suited for informal conversations, others will be particularly useful for developers who frequently communicate over WhatsApp. There was no schedule given indicating when all WhatsApp users may anticipate seeing the updates on their phones. It should be fixed in the upcoming app update, so be sure to check for updates as they roll out.

Before, Meta had been seen experimenting with text formatting features in a WhatsApp beta build. Code blocks, lists, and quote blocks were visible in Android 2.24.2.9. At the time, it was unclear, however, if the purpose of this feature’s testing was to expressly appeal to developers’ needs. In addition, no information was provided to establish if, in the event that they were released at all, these would be the only possibilities for text formatting.

Meta has been testing the same enhanced text formatting for WhatsApp on desktop prior to this testing becoming visible in version 2.24.2.9 of the WhatsApp beta for Android. It was expected that the business will eventually prioritize adding it to the mobile app as well. But before it even began testing the feature for Android, months would pass. It’s possible to finally put an end to this speculation now that Zuckerberg has spoken.