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?

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).

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.