WhatsApp puts emoji front and centre of app and makes text formatting slicker

The changes should result in chats that look more varied and visually engaging

There's no more need to remember annoying commands (Getty iStock)

WhatsApp has built new features that are designed to make conversations look more visually appealing.

The first of these improves on WhatsApp’s existing text formatting functionality.

While you’ve long been able to change the appearance of your messages to emphasise certain words or phrases, until now, you’ve had to remember a range of straightforward but fiddly commands to do so.

To make text bold, you’ve needed to place it between two asterisks, like *this*.

To italicise it, you’ve had to sandwich it between two underscores, like _this_, and to strikethrough a message, you’ve needed to use tildes, like ~this~.

WhatsApp has managed to clean the feature up, and the process is now a lot more user-friendly.

All you need to do is highlight the text you want to format by tapping and holding it, select the More Options key on the pop-up menu and tap the formatting option you want.

It’s a simple update that should make the formatting functionality a lot more popular.

WhatsApp has also added an emoji search option, reports Android Police.

The app will suggest relevant emoji when you type a word, such as the crying face when you want to tell somebody you’ve been crying.

For people who don’t tend to use emoji very often, the update could encourage them to embrace the cartoonish images.

For heavy emoji users, the update could simply make it easier to find the right emoji.

The result of all of this will be chats that look more varied and visually engaging.

WhatsApp is primarily used for exchanging text messages, but recent updates like the launch of Status and a range of filters have put it more in line with social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat.