How the symbol list is organized
The page has four kinds of items, and they are built differently:
- Symbols (stars, arrows, math and the other categories): each is one Unicode character whose standard form is text, picked for wide font support. A few, such as ☁, ✔ and ✂, can still appear as small color emoji in some apps and fonts.
- Ornaments for names: brackets, wings and small marks for the start and end of a name. Each is one character, and both halves of a pair are listed, so you can put one on each side.
- Kaomoji: faces made of several text characters, such as (◕‿◕). They are checked to use only characters that do not turn into color emoji. For bigger pictures, such as a cat or a birthday cake, see text art.
- Emoji: the full list of emoji Unicode recommends for general use, in a separate section. These are drawn in color by each device’s emoji font. For the newest Emoji 18.0 characters and for flags, the picker can fall back to Google’s Noto Color Emoji artwork when a device cannot draw them, as the sources page explains.
Symbol and ornament buttons are labeled with the official Unicode name, so screen reader users hear “Copy black star” rather than nothing. Hover or long press to see the code point. Kaomoji are labeled with a short description of the face, and emoji with their standard names.
Good uses for text symbols
- Bios and display names: a star, flower, or crown next to a name.
- Dividers: box drawing lines and blocks make section breaks in posts.
- Lists: checkmarks, crosses and arrows make quick to-do lists in chats.
- Notation: math and currency signs when your keyboard lacks them.
Combine symbols with styled text
Symbols pair well with the styles in the custom font generator, which also has ready-made decorations such as ✧ sparkles ✧ and 【brackets】. The cool font generator shows a curated set of decorated styles.
Accessibility
Screen readers usually read each symbol by its name, so a row of ten stars is read as “black star” ten times. Use one or two symbols for decoration rather than long rows, and do not use symbols to replace important words.