What ⛳ means
⛳ is the flag in hole emoji, filed under Activities in the sport subgroup of the Unicode emoji index.
It was added in Emoji 0.6 (2010) and the underlying characters entered Unicode in version 5.2 (2009). The characters therefore predate their emoji presentation by 1 years.
How it is encoded
⛳ is a single code point, U+26F3.
It is RGI (recommended for general interchange), so every major platform ships artwork for it.
Combination ideas
1A suggested way to say you're off to play golf.
Worth knowing
- ⛳ came to Unicode from Japanese sources: it matches a golf-course symbol from Japanese digital TV broadcasting, and Japanese phone carriers already had golf emoji, some showing the flag, DoCoMo's a club.
Questions people ask
1Why does ⛳ look different on other phones?
Every platform draws its own artwork for the same code point. The character you send is identical; Apple, Google, Samsung and WhatsApp each render it in their own style.
How to type ⛳
Windows
Win+.Open the emoji picker and search “flag in hole”.
macOS
Control+Command+Spaceopens the character viewer.
iOS / Android
Emoji keyboard → search “flag in hole”.
Chat apps
:golf:the common shortcode; support varies by platform.HTML
⛳Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
⛳
HTML hex
⛳
CSS content
content: "\26F3";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E2%9B%B3
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.