YouTube lets you bold, italicize and strike through text in a video description with the formatting buttons in its description editor: the options at the bottom of the description box on desktop, or the editing bar that appears when you highlight text on mobile. For a bold look that pastes anywhere, you can use Unicode bold instead, but keep it to a word or two.
Most descriptions are a wall of links, disclaimers and hashtags. A little formatting helps viewers find what they came for: the product link, the chapter they need, your newsletter. Here's what YouTube supports natively, where Unicode fits in, and what to avoid.
YouTube's help page for video descriptions describes two ways to format text, depending on the device:
- On desktop (YouTube Studio): format text directly in the description box using the options at the bottom of it.
- On mobile: highlight the text you want to change to open the editing bar, then pick a formatting option.
That's how you make text bold, italic or struck through. For bulleted lists, YouTube says to start a line with *, + or - followed by a space.
Because this is YouTube's built-in formatting, it's the best choice for anything that matters: it doesn't change the letters themselves, so screen readers and search still see normal words.
Many guides tell you to wrap words in asterisks, like *this*, to make them bold. That shortcut is for comments: YouTube's help page for comments lists *bold*, _italic_ and -strikethrough-. For descriptions, YouTube documents the formatting buttons, so use those and check the preview before you publish.
Unicode bold swaps each letter for a look-alike character from the Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols block, turning "gear" into "𝗴𝗲𝗮𝗿". Because the style lives in the characters, it survives copy and paste into places without formatting options, such as your channel description. Our YouTube text formatter and bold text generator create it.
The trade-offs are real:
- Screen readers may skip these characters or read them letter by letter, so viewers who rely on them can miss the message.
- Search treats them as different characters, so a styled word doesn't help the video get found for that word.
- Older devices without the right fonts can show empty boxes.
Use Unicode bold for a short label such as "GEAR LIST" or "FREE TEMPLATE", never for whole paragraphs or the keywords you want to rank for.
Put the important part first
YouTube shows only the first few lines of a description before viewers tap "more" (or "Show more" on desktop), and its help page suggests using those lines to describe your video. Whatever you most want seen, whether a key link, a disclosure or your main offer, belongs there, not at the bottom.
Formatting helps most in that opening area:
- A bold label in front of your most important link.
- A correction, with strikethrough on the old information and bold on the new.
- A clear disclosure for affiliate or sponsored links.
Example: making description links easier to spot
Picture a tech review channel whose descriptions are a block of plain text with raw URLs mixed in. Viewers have to hunt for the link they want.
A tidier version puts the most important link in the first two lines, gives each group of links a short bold label on its own line, and keeps everything else plain. To see whether it helps, tag the links with a UTM builder and compare clicks in your own analytics before and after.
Chapters come from timestamps listed in your description, one per line, like 03:45 How to build the PC. YouTube's rules: the first timestamp must be 00:00, you need at least three in ascending order, and each chapter must be at least 10 seconds long. Leave the timestamps themselves as plain text; if you want the labels to stand out, format them after typing the list, then check that the chapters still appear in the preview.
Best practices
- Don't over-style. If everything is bold, nothing is. Limit styling to a few labels and one key sentence.
- Keep keywords plain. YouTube says descriptions with relevant keywords can help people find your videos, and styled Unicode doesn't count as those words.
- Check on a phone. After publishing, open the video on mobile and make sure your key link shows before "more".
- Go easy on emoji bullets. A symbol like 🟦 or ▪️ next to a bold label can structure a long description, but screen readers announce every emoji.
- Watch the length. Descriptions hold up to 5,000 characters; our guide to the YouTube description character limit covers what counts.
The short version
Use YouTube's formatting buttons for bold, italic and strikethrough in descriptions, start list lines with *, + or -, keep your keywords in plain text, and save Unicode bold for a label or two where the built-in formatting isn't available.
