Formatting in a Play full description

You wrote a description with structure. It renders on the store as something else. Nothing was rejected and nothing warned you.

Play renders a small set of tags, and strips the rest

The full description supports a short documented list of HTML tags. Anything outside it is not an error — it is simply removed, and the text it wrapped inherits whatever formatting surrounds it. That is why the failure is silent: there is no rejection and no warning, just a listing that reads differently from the one you wrote.

A layout built from <div> or <span> elements is the usual case. Both disappear, and the content collapses into the surrounding block.

Write for a plain reader first

The description is read on a phone, largely by people who expand it deliberately. Structure that survives everywhere — short paragraphs, a blank line between them, and a list only where the content is genuinely a list — carries further than markup that may or may not render.

Check the rendered listing, not the editor

The Play Console text area is not a preview. The only reliable way to see what a reader will see is the rendered store listing, and the only way to see that before publishing is to check the text against what Play will do with it.

Where this comes from: these Play checks come from rejections and warnings measured on our own submissions, not only from the documentation.

Source: Play Console listing limits, verified 2026-09-15