What ☻ means
☻ is the black smiling face. Unicode classifies it as an “other symbol” — Unicode's shelf for signs that are neither maths, money nor punctuation and files it in the Miscellaneous Symbols block; this site shelves it under Stars & signs.
Its appearance depends on the font and text styling.
How it is encoded
☻ is a single code point, U+263B. In HTML that is ☻, and in CSS \263B.
Don't confuse it with
4Questions people ask
1Why does ☻ look like a square?
The font or app lacks display support for ☻. It may show a blank or a generic replacement mark; the character itself has not changed.
How to type ☻
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 263B, 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 “black smiling face”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 263b, then Enter or Space.
HTML
☻CSS
\263BCodes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
☻
HTML hex
☻
CSS content
content: "\263B";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E2%98%BB
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.