WhatsApp supports strikethrough text in two ways: by wrapping your message in tildes (~~like this~~) before sending, or by pasting in crossed-out Unicode characters produced by a generator like Strikethrough Text. Both produce a line through the middle of your words, but they work very differently under the hood. The tilde method is a WhatsApp-only formatting command: WhatsApp reads the tildes, strips them away, and applies a strikethrough style to the letters between them. The result is real rich-text formatting, which means it looks perfect inside WhatsApp, edits cleanly, and removes instantly if the recipient's client does not support it. The Unicode method, by contrast, is plain text: every letter ships with an invisible combining mark that draws the line through it. Because nothing about the text is "formatted" in the rich-text sense, the same string of characters pastes intact into Instagram bios, Discord usernames, Reddit comments, and any other plain-text field where WhatsApp's tilde command would simply display as two stray tilde characters. For a quick message inside WhatsApp, tildes win on simplicity. For anything that needs to look crossed-out everywhere, including places that have no formatting toolbar at all, the Unicode approach wins on portability.
What Strikethrough Actually Does in a WhatsApp Message
Strikethrough in WhatsApp draws a horizontal line straight through the middle of every character in the selected range. It is one of four text styles WhatsApp has built in, alongside bold, italic, and monospace. WhatsApp applies it as real formatting, so the line tracks the font cleanly, the letters stay legible underneath, and the recipient can copy your message and reformat it on their end. To get it with the shortcut method, type two tilde characters (~) on each side of your phrase, then send. WhatsApp recognizes the pattern, removes the tildes, and renders the inside as strikethrough. The same shortcut works on the WhatsApp desktop and web clients, and the result is identical to what you would get from the formatting menu that appears on a long-press of a message bubble.
The tilde wrapper only works inside WhatsApp's own composer. The instant your message is copied out of the chat and pasted into another app, the tildes come along as literal characters and the strikethrough line disappears. That is the core limitation: WhatsApp's strikethrough is not portable. If you need crossed-out text that survives the trip into an X/Twitter bio, a Discord username, or a Notion page that has no formatting controls, you need characters that carry their own line. That is exactly what Unicode combining overlays do.
Method 1: Use WhatsApp's Built-In Tilde Shortcut
The fastest way to strikethrough text in WhatsApp is the tilde wrapper, and it takes about three seconds once you know the pattern.
- Open the chat you want to send the message in.
- Type two tilde characters, then your phrase, then two more tilde characters. For example: ~~meeting at 3pm~~
- Before hitting send, watch the preview inside the message bubble. WhatsApp renders the text between the tildes with a strikethrough line and hides the tildes themselves.
- Tap send. The message arrives with a clean strikethrough and no leftover tildes.
You can combine styles on the same message by nesting wrappers. Wrap text in asterisks (*) for bold, underscores (_) for italic, backticks (`) for monospace, and tildes (~) for strikethrough. They can overlap, so *~bold strikethrough~* gives you both styles at once. This only works inside WhatsApp's own message field; copy the result into another app and the wrappers come back as plain characters.
Method 2: Generate Unicode Strikethrough and Paste It Into WhatsApp
When you need crossed-out text that looks the same in WhatsApp, in an Instagram bio, and in a Discord username, generate it once with the Strikethrough Text tool and paste it wherever you need it. Here is the exact workflow.
- Open the Strikethrough Text generator in your browser.
- Type or paste the phrase you want to cross out into the input box on the left.
- Pick a style from the available overlays. The default strikethrough draws a long line through the middle of every character. You can also pick short strike, slash strike, underline, or tilde strike to compare how each overlay looks against your text.
- Watch the output update live in the preview pane. The right-hand box shows exactly what will land in your chat: every visible letter followed by an invisible combining mark that draws the line.
- Click Copy, then open WhatsApp and long-press inside the message field, then tap Paste.
The pasted characters carry their own line, so WhatsApp renders them as crossed-out text exactly the way the preview showed them. Because there are no tildes, asterisks, or other Markdown wrappers involved, the same string pastes unchanged into Twitter, Reddit, Discord, and any other plain-text field. Everything happens in your browser: nothing is uploaded, no account is required, and the tool runs on your device the moment you load the page.
The Five Strike Styles Compared
Strikethrough Text ships with five overlay options. Each one is a different Unicode combining mark, applied once after every visible character, so the visual result depends on which mark you choose. The table below lays out how each overlay renders on a typical font and which Unicode code point produces it.
| Style | Unicode Mark | Visual Result | Best Used For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strikethrough (classic) | U+0336 COMBINING LONG STROKE OVERLAY | A single horizontal line through the middle of every letter | General crossed-out text, showing corrections, marking a price as old |
| Short strike | U+0335 COMBINING SHORT STROKE OVERLAY | A tighter, slightly higher overlay line | Compact text where the long line crowds descenders |
| Slash strike | U+0338 COMBINING LONG SOLIDUS OVERLAY | A diagonal solidus slash through each character | Editorial-style strike, marking a wrong answer, dramatic corrections |
| Underline | U+0332 COMBINING LOW LINE | A horizontal line drawn under the baseline | Emphasis that reads as underscoring rather than crossing out |
| Tilde strike | U+0334 COMBINING TILDE OVERLAY | A wavy tilde drawn above each character | Decorative overlay, signal of a draft, soft strikethrough effect |
All five are applied the same way: one combining mark per visible character, in order, with no spacing in between. The actual rendering depends on the font your device uses. Most modern browsers, iOS, Android, and WhatsApp itself stack the line cleanly. A few older systems or unusual fonts place the mark slightly off-center or render it as an empty box, which is why pasting a short sample into your specific chat is worth the five seconds before committing to a bigger paste.
Where Else Crossed-Out Unicode Travels
The big practical advantage of the Unicode method over WhatsApp's tilde shortcut is that the same string of characters works in places that have no formatting toolbar at all. Social bios are the classic case: an X/Twitter bio, an Instagram caption, a TikTok bio, a Discord server nickname, a Reddit comment, a LinkedIn headline. None of those fields give you a strikethrough button, and none of them understand WhatsApp's tilde wrapper. Paste pre-crossed-out Unicode in, however, and the line shows up because the line lives inside the characters themselves, not in some formatting layer on top of them.
That portability is also useful inside the chat itself. WhatsApp's native strikethrough edits cleanly — long-press a message, choose formatting, toggle strikethrough off — while pasted Unicode strikethrough does not, because there is no formatting to toggle. Treat the two methods as different tools for different jobs: tildes for messages you might want to un-strike later, the Unicode generator for messages, bios, and posts that need to look crossed-out everywhere they end up. If you only need bold alongside your strikethrough, the same logic applies: the bold text guide for WhatsApp messages walks through the asterisk wrapper and the Unicode bold generator side by side.
Honest Limits and Accessibility Notes
Unicode overlay strikethrough is a clever visual hack, not a formatting standard, so it comes with three honest trade-offs worth knowing before you rely on it. First, screen readers ignore combining overlay marks and read only the underlying letters. Someone using VoiceOver, TalkBack, or NVDA hears your plain text with no signal that anything is crossed out. Never use strikethrough alone to communicate that a price is cancelled, that an answer is wrong, or that a sentence should be read as a correction — pair it with a word ("cancelled", "wrong", "old price") so the meaning is carried by the words themselves. Second, rendering varies by font and platform. Most modern devices stack the line cleanly through the middle of each character; a few older systems or niche fonts place the mark slightly high, slightly low, or render it as an empty square. Paste a short sample into the actual chat where it will be read before sending anything long. Third, some platforms with aggressive text filtering reject unusual character sequences outright. If a post gets blocked, try the short strike style (U+0335) instead, which uses a less common but still valid combining mark and often passes through filters that block U+0336.
None of these limits are reasons to avoid the method. They are reasons to pick the right tool for each situation: tildes inside WhatsApp when you might want to undo the strike later, Unicode everywhere else, and both work in the same chat if you want strikethrough inside WhatsApp that also survives being copied out.