Fast-Forward Button

Fast-forward: go through something faster, or jump ahead.

The picture is the fast-forward control, two right-pointing triangles, that has sat on cassette decks, video recorders, remote controls and every music or video app since. One triangle ▶️ means play at normal speed; doubling it means “faster than play.” On tape machines it physically wound the tape forward; on a phone it usually jumps a few seconds ahead or speeds up playback. The abbreviation FF comes from the same button, and the opposite button, rewind ⏪, is its mirror image.

Away from any player, people use ⏩ for anything that goes forward quickly. In a story or caption it marks a time skip, like the written phrase “fast forward to today”: “⏩ three hours later, still no pizza.” It can mean speeding something up (“⏩ let’s get this done”), a plan moving ahead, or watching a lecture at double speed. Very often it has no meaning at all beyond “look here”: in posts and group messages, a ⏩ in front of a link or each line of a list is just an eye-catching bullet, the emoji version of an arrow.

The main confusion is with ⏭️, the triangle with a vertical bar at the end. That one means “next track” or “skip to the next item”; ⏩ moves within what is already playing. On a remote the difference matters, and in a message ⏭️ is the better pick for “moving on to the next thing,” while ⏩ is better for “skipping forward through this one.”

What does it mean when someone sends ⏩?

Check whose story it is: a time skip in theirs, a hurry-up in yours.

Inside the sender’s own message, ⏩ is harmless narration: it jumps past the dull part of their day to what happened next, or flags that something has been fast-tracked. In front of a link it is a pointer with nothing to decode. As a reply to a long message of yours, though, a lone ⏩ reads as “skip ahead” or “and the point is…?”, friendly between close friends who tease each other, curt from anyone else. If you receive one and are unsure, the tone of the words around it (or their absence) tells you which it is. If you send one, add a few words unless you really do mean “hurry up.”