As WhatsApp promised few days ago that they would introduce text formatting tools for Android Beta, the tools are now finally available for those users who are using WhatsApp version 2.12.17 on iOS and version 2.12.535 for Android.
So what are these text formatting features offer to the users? The esteemed British newspaper Telegraph has explained it superbly in their latest published article. If you are using the updated version of the WhatsApp, you can add asterisks to either side of the desired text to format it into bold letters. Like if you add asterisks to both side of *hello*, it will turn into bold letters. To italicize a user has to add underscores on the either sides of the text; for example _hello_ . And if you wish to strike through your text simply add tildes on both side of the text; such as ~hello~.
A user can also combine the new formatting tools if he or she wants to. Like if you want your text to be both bold and italics you can simply use the _*hello*_ format.
For the time being, these features are still in the testing phase and more like a temporary workaround but if these new text formatting tools become popular among the users WhatsApp will make these features permanent. Also these features only work in cross-platform,that means you can only apply these formatting tools on your texts if your friend, to whom you are sending the text, also has the above mentioned versions of WhatsApp installed on their smartphones.
Along with these, the most popular instant messaging service of this generation also incorporated some more changes recently. WhatsApp will now display the progress percentage to the user, whenever an automatic local backup is in motion. Although, the pop-up will still block everything but at least it will show the percentage, so that the user gets a fair idea of how much time he or she has to wait before the app is ready to use again.
Another minor change WhatsApp brings on in the latest update is the phone number will no longer arrive in the front and centre of the new Settings screen. The latest profile section will only display the name, photo and status of the user, but not the phone number.
Apart from these changes, the California-based social networking company made some new improvements to the document file sharing feature too. According to a report, now, a user can select a Word file, a PDF, or a PowerPoint presentation file from Google Drive and also can share through Google Drive. Although all types of files will be converted to PDF format first, before sending it to the other WhatsApp users.