Can't type/view bold text in Android Facebook Messenger App

Question

I have been building a Messenger Bot for about a week now and I had no problems so far. But recently I got stuck in an absurd bug (kind of).

So I use bold text in certain parts of my messages like *bold text* (which translates to bold text) and it works perfectly fine in desktop version of Facebook and also on messenger.com but strangely the android messenger app can't display the text between the asterisks in bold, instead, it just prints out *bold text*

Below are the screenshots to better represent the issue

messenger.com screenshot

Android Messenger App Screenshot

Thank you for reading.

Answer 1

The official help page does indeed state that it only works for computers: https://www.facebook.com/help/147348452522644

Keep in mind that text formatting is only visible on a computer, and will not appear in the Messenger app on mobile.

However, it seems like they've started testing it on mobile: https://twitter.com/wongmjane/status/1098658053426098176

Answer 2

Can resolve with this simple hack

1. convert your text using some online unicode text converters (e.g: https://qaz.wtf/u/convert.cgi)

2. copy converted text and paste into your code. That's it.

This is working in facebook.com, messenger.com and messenger mobile app.