What ▉ means
It fills seven eighths of a character cell from the left. A bar supplies the scale. Font metrics can change its width or leave seams between adjacent blocks.
Terminal graphics build bars and diagrams from fixed-width character cells. A 1998 proposal for extra terminal symbols surveyed terminal sets including IBM PC Code Page 437, a character set used by PCs, noting such graphics rarely appeared on keyboard labels. Unicode 3.2 included a separate set of terminal graphics in 2002.
What it means when someone sends it to you
2 readingsAlone in chat
A layout mark or stray character, with no settled social meaning.
Repeated in a progress bar
A filled segment whose value comes from the bar’s scale.
Don't confuse it with
4Questions 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 2589, 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 “left seven eighths block”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 2589, then Enter or Space.
HTML
▉CSS
\2589Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
▉
HTML hex
▉
CSS content
content: "\2589";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E2%96%89
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.