Google Play app description formatting

Question

I've made an Android application that is available on Google Play. Now I want to add some more formatting to my app description (eg. indent, links, lists..). But I cannot find any website where possible formatting is listed. Google Help pages cannot help me either on this subject. There exists a lot of different formats and I don't really know which one to use (eg. HTML or wiki formatting..)

I could test it with trial and error, but that would take some time, because Google Play only refreshes after 2-3 hours. And while I'm testing, my app description would be rather ugly if the wrong format was used.

tl;dr Is there a list of all possible formatting I could use in the app description for Google Play?

Isola

Answer 1

Experimentally, I've discovered that you can provide:

• Single line breaks are ignored; double line breaks open a new paragraph.
• Single line breaks can be enforced by ending a line with two spaces (similar to Markdown).
• A limited set of HTML tags (optionally nested), specifically:
  • <b>…</b> for boldface,
  • <i>…</i> for italics,
  • <u>…</u> for underline,
  • <br /> to enforce a single line break,
  • I could not find any way to get strikethrough working (neither HTML or Markdown style).
• A fully-formatted URL such as http://google.com; this appears as a hyperlink.
  (Beware that trying to use an HTML <a> tag for a custom description does not work and breaks the formatting.)
• HTML character entities are supported, such as → (→), ™ (™) and ® (®); consult this W3 reference for the exhaustive list.
• UTF-8 encoded characters are supported, such as é, €, £, ‘, ’, ★ and ☆.
• Indentation isn't strictly possible, but using a bullet and em space character looks reasonable (•  yields "• ").
• Emoji are also supported (though on the website depends on the user's OS & browser).

Special notes concerning only Google Play app:

• Some HTML tags only work in the app:
  • <blockquote>…</blockquote> to indent a paragraph of text,
  • <small>…</small> for slightly smaller text,
  • <big>…</big> for slightly larger text,
  • <sup>…</sup> and <sub>…</sub> for super- and subscripts.
  • <font color="#a32345">…</font> for setting font colors in HEX code.
• Some symbols do not appear correctly, such as ‣.
• All these notes also apply to the app's "What's New" section.

Special notes concerning only Google Play website:

• All HTML formatting appears as plain text in the website's "What's New" section (i.e. users will see the HTML source).

Sawfly

Is it just me, or font color is not supported anymore? :( – Atal

It seems that indeed font color no longer works on the Google Play website. At the moment, it does still appear in the Google Play app. – Sawfly

@Tom All formatting above works in the Google Play app, but I'm afraid only plain text works on the website's "What's New" section. – Sawfly

I believe strikethroughs work in the What's New section, within the app. I saw a developer strikethrough a sentence, which was a short joke that they had included in the update text. I'll update this comment with a link if I can find it again. – Broderick

I would add this link: support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/… in order to complete the answer. Experiments can help developers to decide / test which description is better, by adding 2 or more variants. – Jarlen

I just created an expirment with the <b></b> and <u></u> tags around some words. But the preview shows the text with those actual tags in them. Is that normal? Or should I be seeing the actual formatted output with the preview? – Terbium

<b> tags work. @Terbium You need to publish your changes in GP and wait for them to take place. Tags will always be shown in web Dev interface, and interpreted in the GP web page (when published). – Godfearing

<big> .... </big> also works for a bigger font, and it seems that double line breaks are not needed anymore. – Balderdash

I've found that <p> tags now work (rather than having to use <br />), and <a> tags are now required for links. For safety on the various Play platforms, I have been formatting as <a href="https://example.com/">https://example.com/</a> – Imperfect

A fully-formatted URL such as google.com does not appear as a hyperlink. maybe update the answer. – Alagez

Answer 2

Currently (July 2015), HTML escape sequences (• •) do not work in browser version of Play Store, they're displayed as text. Though, Play Store app handles them as expected.

So, if you're after the unicode bullet point in your app/update description [that's what's got you here, most likely], just copy-paste the bullet character

•

PS You can also use unicode input combo to get the character

Linux: CtrlShiftu 2022 Enter or Space

Mac: Hold ⌥ 2022 release ⌥

Windows: Hold Alt 2022 release Alt

Mac and Windows require some setup, read on Wikipedia

PPS If you're feeling creative, here's a good link with more copypastable symbols, but don't go too crazy, nobody likes clutter in what they read.

Fake

I just thought I would mention that Alt+Num7 also works for bullet points and is easier to remember. – Cl

Answer 3

As a matter of fact, HTML character entites also work : http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/sgml/entities.html.

It lets you insert special characters like bullets '•' (&bull;), '™' (&trade;), ... the HTML way.

Note that you can also (and probably should) type special characters directly in the form fields if you can enter international characters.

=> one consideration here is whether or not you care about third-party sites that collect data on your app from Google Play : some might simply take it as HTML content, others might insert it in a native application that just understand plain Unicode...

Volcanology

Is there a tag/character for indentation? – Mackoff

@androiddeveloper Just go to any website which has Unicode em space. Copying the character is a bit tricky because it's just a space so it's hard to see where it is. Try a website like codepoints.net/U+2003?lang=en which has an actual "copy to clipboard" button you can click. – Vday

Answer 4

This is not bullet but you can consider it. As there is nothing like big dot.

I used below symbol in the description and its working fine.

⚫ Black Circle

🌑 New Moon

🌕 Full Moon

💠 Diamond With a Dot

🔸 Small Orange Diamond

⚙ Gear

🏴 Black Flag

🏳 White Flag

▶ Play Button

⏩ Fast-Forward Button

⭕ Heavy Large Circle

✴ Eight-Pointed Star

◼ Black Medium Square

◽ White Medium-Small Square

◾ Black Medium-Small Square

⬛ Black Large Square

You just need to copy and paste it over description. Below is the result.

Estep

Answer 5

Currently (June 2016) typing in the link as http://www.example.com will only produce plain text.

You can now however put in an html anchor :

<a href="http://www.example.com">My Example Site</a>

Biondo

I was hoping this would work in response to Play Store reviews as well, but sadly they seem to strip it out. Shame as I'd really like to include clickable links to help articles. – Campbellite

It depends on the viewer. The web site leaves a simple URL (not in an HTML anchor tag) as plain text; however, the app will still turn the simple text version into a link automatically. (As of August 2016 anyway.) – Nutriment

Is there a way to make this work in the Play Store app? I tried this with a url to a different app version in the Play Store and on the Google Play website it worked initially, but not in the Play Store app (wouldn't link). I tried something else, which failed, and then returned the <a> tags and then the website wouldn't link either. – Backdrop

Answer 6

Title, Short Description and Developer Name

• HTML formatting is not supported in these fields, but you can include UTF-8 symbols and Emoji: ✓☆👍

Full Description and What’s New:

• For the Long Description and What’s New Section, there is a wider variety of HTML codes you can apply to format and structure your text. However, they will look slightly different in Google Play Store app and web.
• Here is a table with codes that you can use for formatting Description and What’s New fields for your app on Google Play (originally appeared on ASO Stack blog):

Also you can refer this..

https://thetool.io/2020/html-emoji-google-play

Unduly

Answer 7

Include emojis; copy and paste them to the description:

http://getemoji.com

Unadvised

I found a bug. Why this link lacks the nofollow attribute? – Gelt

Answer 8

<br> seems to be the best and only way that currently works on the app version to create a new line break. I have tried it successfully in a review, as well as unsuccessfully tried all other Unicode/HTML newline-related characters that the Wikipedia page for newlines would tell me. I used <br> with | immediately on either side, using no closing tag, and it magically created a single line break without revealing the source or screwing anything up.

TLDR: <br> lets you successfully utilize single line breaks in Google Play app -- unlike everything else I tried (a lot).

P.S. I have no clue how to make the thing show source instead of being used as source. !^( Now I do, and I know it works on both the desktop and mobile sites. !!

Additionally, upon searching for how to make it show the source, I stumbled upon this. <del></del>

Heinz