WhatsApp is unusual because it already has formatting built in, and most people have never been shown it.
Wrapping a word in asterisks makes it bold inside the app, underscores make it italic, and tildes strike it through.
Styled characters are for everything that formatting cannot reach, like your About line or a group name.
Built-in formatting or styled characters?
Use the built-in formatting inside a chat. It is cleaner, it renders identically for everyone, and it never shows up as a box.
Use styled characters where the formatting does not apply, which is the About text, group names, and anywhere you want the styling to survive being copied elsewhere.
The profile name field is short, so a decorated name runs out of room quickly.
What to watch for in group chats
- Group members on older phones see boxes, and in a family group that is a real share of the people.
- Small caps and bold have the widest support, so they are the safe picks for a group name.
- Styled text cannot be searched inside WhatsApp, so a group name in script is harder to find in a long chat list.
- Heart and sparkle frames leave your letters alone, which keeps the name searchable.
Tip: I renamed a family group in a fancy script and my father could not find it again, because searching the plain name no longer matched anything. We went back to a plain name with two small symbols on the ends, and that kept both the look and the search.
Related tools: Fonts for Facebook , Font Copy Paste and Cool Text Generator .
This page styles text you already have. If you are still working out the name itself, a nickname generator covers that side, and it is easier to pick the words first and style them once at the end.