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Add Bold, Underline, & Italics to Stylize Text in iOS Mail

Style text in iOS Mail

Stylizing text with bold, underline, or italics in the iOS Mail app is easily done with the same tap-and-hold contextual menu that also allows you to select text, block quote, and insert photos. To access the text styling menu:

  • Tap and hold on any text in Mail app, choose "Select" and adjust the sliders to the text you want to select
  • Tap the "B I U" button to reveal the text styles (you may need to tap the > arrow button to reveal the option if device is in portrait orientation)
  • Choose either "Bold", "Italics", or "Underline"
  • Repeat to apply additional styling

Make text bold, italic, or underline in iOS Mail

As you probably guessed, this litte-known trick works the same in Mail on iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Technically the stylize feature appears in a few other places in iOS too, but we're focusing on the Mail app because this feature is universally supported there, whereas apps like Notes do not yet support it. This could be new from iOS 6 onward, I don't have an older iOS device handy at the moment to give it a try and find out for sure.

We covered a handful of helpful typing tips for iOS and somehow missed this one, thanks for sending in another great tip Mithilesh!