What ⮏ means
It was already used as a font symbol. A 2011 Unicode proposal identifies the Wingdings 3 arrow as item w-3076. The wider project covered Wingdings, Webdings, Wingdings 2, and Wingdings 3, aiming to give their symbols dedicated Unicode characters so they could be searched and exchanged as text instead of relying on font-specific codes or special menus.
Don't confuse it with
4⮌⮍⮎⭯
Anticlockwise Triangle-Headed Right U-Shaped Arrow
shares “anticlockwise”, “arrow”, “headed”, “shaped”, “triangle”, “u”
Anticlockwise Triangle-Headed Bottom U-Shaped Arrow
shares “anticlockwise”, “arrow”, “headed”, “shaped”, “triangle”, “u”
Anticlockwise Triangle-Headed Left U-Shaped Arrow
shares “anticlockwise”, “arrow”, “headed”, “shaped”, “triangle”, “u”
Anticlockwise Triangle-Headed Open Circle Arrow
shares “anticlockwise”, “arrow”, “headed”, “triangle”
Questions people ask
1Why does ⮏ show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
How to type ⮏
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 2B8F, then Alt+X to get ⮏.
Windows
Win+Rrun charmap for the full table, or use the emoji picker's Ω symbols tab (Win + .).
macOS
Control+Command+SpaceOpen the character viewer and search “anticlockwise triangle-headed top u-shaped arrow”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 2b8f, then Enter or Space.
HTML
⮏CSS
\2B8FCodes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
⮏
HTML hex
⮏
CSS content
content: "\2B8F";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E2%AE%8F
1
On screen
1
Code points
1
JS .length
3
UTF-8 bytes
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.