Lightning bolt symbol: the ⚡ emoji and its text versions ☇ ↯ 🗲
is the lightning bolt emoji. Its official Unicode name is High Voltage, because it started life as the hazard sign for electricity (a bolt inside a yellow triangle) before it became a weather and energy emoji. It was added to Unicode 4.0 in 2003 and joined the emoji set in 2015; every phone draws it as a yellow zigzag. cloud with lightning and cloud with lightning and rain are the storm versions, and they belong with the rest of the Weather Emoji.
If you want a bolt that behaves like text and takes the colour of the surrounding letters, use one of the symbols: lightning and thunderstorm (both in Unicode since 1993), lightning mood (a Webdings and Wingdings icon that reached Unicode 7.0 in 2014), downwards zigzag arrow, the heavier , the small electric arrow, and the odd right angle with downwards zigzag arrow. and are the bolt inside a speech bubble and on an envelope, from the same Wingdings batch. On many systems ⚡︎, the emoji followed by the text variation selector UFE0E, also renders as a plain black bolt.
電 is the Chinese and Japanese character for electricity (and for lightning in older use), 雷 is thunder, and and are the I Ching trigram and hexagram for thunder, the Arousing. The Egyptian hieroglyph is a lightning bolt too, three thousand years older than any of the others.
To type the bolt: on a phone, search the emoji keyboard for “lightning”, “bolt” or “zap” (the Slack, GitHub and Discord shortcode is :zap:); on Windows, Win+. opens the emoji panel, and in Word you can type 26A1 then Alt+X for or 2607 for ; on a Mac, Control+Command+Space opens the Character Viewer. The text bolts have no keyboard keys and no standard Alt codes, so copying from this page is the quickest route; in HTML write ⚡ for and ☇ for .
What the lightning bolt emoji means
In messages means energy, speed and power: a burst of hype (“new drop tomorrow ”), being fired up, something fast or electric, a sudden idea or a shock. Pair it with and for motivation, with for a flash of inspiration, with for being charged up. It is also the shorthand for anything that runs on electricity: an electric car, a charger, a power cut. Fans use it for Usain Bolt, the Flash, Pikachu and the Harry Potter scar, and bands from AC/DC onward have put it in their logos.
On devices the same bolt has fixed meanings. A bolt over the battery icon on a phone or in the status bar means the battery is charging. A bolt next to a stud finder's light means it has detected live wiring. On a car dashboard a lightning bolt between two brackets, red or amber, is the Electronic Throttle Control warning on Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram vehicles: the drive-by-wire throttle has reported a fault, the car may drop into limp mode, and it needs a scan tool rather than a guess.
Weather apps and forecasts use and for thunderstorms, and is the old text weather sign for a thunderstorm; the cloud versions are the ones to pick when you mean actual weather rather than a mood.
Power symbol and the on/off family
The power button symbol , a line breaking into a circle, is the one printed on nearly every device. The line is the binary 1 for on and the circle the 0 for off, so the combined sign means a button that does both; in the IEC 60417 standard that mark is technically standby. Its relatives are power on (the bare line), power off (the bare circle), on/off, a line inside a closed circle for a toggle, and sleep, the crescent moon from the IEEE 1621 standard.
The four were added to Unicode 9.0 in 2016 after a public proposal, which is why they are missing from older fonts; the circle was already there as a heavy circle. They are plain text, so they work in a manual, a README, a keyboard shortcut guide or a Discord message where an emoji would look wrong. eject and the other media buttons live with the Play, Pause & Media Button Symbols; the Mac modifier keys are in Computer Emoji & Keyboard Symbols. To type , copy it here, type 23FB then Alt+X in Word, search “power” in the Mac Character Viewer, or write ⏻ in HTML.
Electricity symbols: current, ground, circuit parts and units
The signs you see on power supplies and multimeters are all Unicode characters. is direct current (a line over a dashed line, as on a DC adapter), alternating current (the sine wave), earth ground, a fuse and an electrical intersection, the dot where two wires are joined. Logic datasheets add monostable, hysteresis (a Schmitt trigger input), open-circuit outputs and passive pull-down and pull-up outputs.
Unicode 16.0 (2024) brought in a set of circuit-drawing pieces from 1970s and 1980s home computer character sets: resistor segments , three inductor thirds that join into a coil, capacitors , diodes , NPN and PNP transistors and an antenna . They need a recent font (Cascadia Code or Unifont, for instance) but let you sketch a tiny schematic in plain text.
Units: Ω is the ohm sign for resistance and the inverted ohm, the old mho for conductance. The squared units and their prefixed siblings come from East Asian character sets and pack a whole unit like mA, kV, kW, kΩ, µF or MHz into one character; and write watt and kilowatt in katakana. The plain letters V, A and W are ordinary capitals, so a voltage is simply 230 V. Other units, the degree sign and are in Degree & Unit Symbols; the full Greek alphabet, including the letter Omega that Ω is equivalent to, is in Greek Letters.
Plugs, batteries, bulbs and the rest
electric plug means a charger, an outlet, “plug it in” or, as a verb, to plug something. battery (full) and low battery (added in 2021) describe a phone and, just as often, a person: a social battery that is charged or drained. light bulb is the idea emoji and the light itself; for a power cut you reach for flashlight and candle, and diya lamp is the oil lamp of Diwali. are the dim and bright brightness buttons.
gear stands for settings, machinery and engineering, with the text gears as plain-text versions; magnet covers magnetism and electromagnets, and satellite antenna is any antenna or signal. For hazards, is the warning triangle that “danger, high voltage” signs use, is radioactive for a nuclear power station or radiation, and the atom symbol for nuclear energy and physics. More signs of that kind are in Warning & Prohibited Sign Emoji.
Symbols
100Click a symbol to copy it and open its page.
Lightning bolts
the emoji first, then the text bolts that take the colour of your text
Circuit and electrical signs
the marks on power supplies, multimeters and datasheets
Volts, amps, watts and ohms
one-character units; prefix across, unit down
How to use them
6 situationsClick to copyLightning Bolt & Electricity Symbols combos
15Worth knowing
- is officially named High Voltage, not lightning: it was encoded in 2003 as the electrical hazard sign, twelve years before it became an emoji.
- Nobody knows where (right angle with downwards zigzag arrow) came from. It was traced back to a 1990s Monotype math font, but no document has ever been found that uses it.
- carries the Unicode annotation “electrolysis”: chemists once used the downward zigzag to mark a reaction driven by electric current.
- The power symbols only entered Unicode in 2016, decades after the marks appeared on the first computers; a public proposal argued that manuals needed a way to print them as text.
- The circuit pieces come from the character ROMs of 1970s and 1980s home computers, where hobbyists drew schematics on screen, and were encoded only in 2024.
Questions people ask
8How do I copy and paste the lightning bolt symbol?
Tap in the grid above to copy it, then paste with CtrlV, CmdV or long-press and Paste on a phone. For a black text bolt, copy , or instead; they take the colour and size of the text around them.
What does the lightning bolt emoji mean?
means energy, power, speed and excitement: a hype reaction, being fired up, something electric or a sudden shock. Literally it is lightning or electricity, so it also stands for chargers, electric cars and power cuts. Its Unicode name is High Voltage.
What does the lightning bolt symbol on a car dash mean?
A lightning bolt between two curved brackets is the Electronic Throttle Control warning, used by Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram. It means the electronic throttle has reported a fault; the car may lose power or enter limp mode and should be checked with a diagnostic scanner.
What is the lightning bolt text symbol?
The text lightning bolts are (lightning, U2607), (lightning mood, U1F5F2), (downwards zigzag arrow, U21AF) and (electric arrow, U2301). is the thunderstorm sign. Typing with the text variation selector also gives a plain bolt on some systems.
What does the power symbol mean?
combines a line (binary 1, on) and a circle (binary 0, off), so it marks a button that switches a device on and off; the IEC standard calls it standby. is on, is off, is a hard on/off toggle and is sleep.
How do I type the power symbol?
Copy from this page, or in Word type 23FB then press AltX. On a Mac open the Character Viewer and search “power”. In HTML use ⏻. There is no power symbol emoji; is a text character and needs a font from 2016 or later.
What does the lightning bolt on my phone battery mean?
A bolt over or beside the battery icon means the phone is charging. On Samsung and other Android phones the same bolt in the status bar shows a charger is connected; it disappears when you unplug.
What are the electricity symbols and their names?
The common ones are high voltage, direct current, alternating current, earth ground, fuse, Ω ohm, plug and battery, plus the circuit parts: resistor , inductor , capacitor , diode and transistors . Units like are single-character milliamp, kilovolt and kilowatt.
