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Markdown ↔ WhatsApp Formatter

Converts Markdown into WhatsApp formatting (*bold*, _italic_, ~strikethrough~) and back, keeping lists, links and code blocks intact.

How it looks on WhatsApp

WhatsApp formatting cheat sheet

  • Bold: one asterisk on each side — *text* (Markdown uses two).
  • Italic: underscores — _text_. Strikethrough: tildes — ~text~.
  • Monospace: three backticks around the snippet. WhatsApp ignores the language name.
  • There are no headings or tables: headings become bold lines and tables become an aligned monospaced block.

Turning Markdown into WhatsApp message formatting

You ask an assistant for a short announcement, paste it into the work group and the message lands like this: **Meeting at 2pm**. The asterisks show up raw because WhatsApp does not read Markdown. It has its own shorter scheme: one asterisk each side for bold, underscores for italic, tildes for strikethrough. Almost the same, and that near match is what trips people up.

Paste the text on one side and get the send-ready version on the other. Headings of any level become a bold line followed by a blank one, hyphen lists become round bullets, task boxes become empty or ticked squares, and the horizontal rule becomes a solid line. The reverse direction works too, for anyone who received WhatsApp text and wants it back as Markdown.

Before anything else is replaced, fenced and inline code is pulled aside and put back untouched at the end. Without that step an asterisk inside a snippet would be read as bold and the code would arrive broken in the chat. Tables get similar care: since WhatsApp has no table, columns are padded with spaces inside a monospaced block, the closest thing to a grid the app offers.

Frequently asked questions

Why does WhatsApp bold use a single asterisk?
Because the app syntax grew up separately from Markdown, aimed at people typing on a phone, and one asterisk is quicker than two. The side effect is that Markdown pasted into a chat leaves the second asterisk on screen, while WhatsApp text pasted into a Markdown editor comes out italic instead of bold.
Does the person receiving it need any setting?
No. The markers travel as ordinary characters inside the message and the receiving app is what renders them. On old versions or alternative clients the asterisks may stay visible, but the message still arrives complete. The monospaced block with three backticks is the newest of them and already works on Android, iPhone and Web.
What happens to Markdown links and images?
WhatsApp has no anchor text: it spots a bare URL and turns it into a link by itself. That is why the preserve links option writes the label followed by the address in parentheses, and anyone who wants the address alone can untick the box. Images become the alt text followed by the URL, since the file itself has to be attached.

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