Open Mailbox with Lowered Flag

An empty mailbox: nothing has come, nothing is waiting. The emoji shows the door swung open so you can see the bare interior, and the signal flag resting against the side. Its official shortcode on many chat apps, :mailbox_with_no_mail:, says the same thing in plain words.

It belongs to a set of four mailbox emoji that differ only in two details: door open or closed, flag up or down. 📫 and 📪 are closed, 📬 is open with the flag raised, and 📭 is open with it lowered. Most platforms draw 📬 with letters tucked inside and 📭 bare, so in practice the pair works as “you've got mail” versus “no mail”, whatever a real postal flag means.

In messages it covers anything inbox-shaped: an empty email folder, a day with no deliveries, a group chat that has gone quiet, or a job application that has had no answer. It also turns up in the literal sense, from someone checking the box at the end of the drive or a newsletter joking that your inbox is looking lonely.

What kind of mailbox is this, and why the flag?

It is the North American curbside mailbox, and the flag asks the carrier to collect. Across the United States and much of Canada, houses on roads without door-to-door delivery have a metal box on a post by the street. The carrier drives up, opens the door and drops the mail in. If you have letters to send, you leave them inside and raise the red flag; the carrier sees it, takes your letters and lowers the flag again. Flag down therefore means “no outgoing mail here”, not “nothing delivered”. Some carriers also flip the flag up after a delivery as a courtesy, which is where the popular reading of 📬 as “mail has arrived” comes from, but that is a local habit rather than the rule.

If you live in Europe, Asia, Latin America or Australia, you have probably never used one of these. Letterboxes there are slots in the door, locked boxes in a lobby, or a small box at the gate, and none of them has a flag, because you post outgoing letters in a public postbox (📮) instead. Emoji were first drawn in Japan, yet this one shows an American object; it reached phones worldwide in Unicode 6.0 as part of the mail set and simply stuck.

What does it mean when someone sends 📭?

Usually “nothing here yet”, said with a shrug rather than a glare. On its own after a question or a sent message, it means they are still waiting and want you to notice. Next to a complaint about email or deliveries, it is literal. In a bio or status, 📭 can mean the person is not taking messages right now, the opposite of the 📬 or 📥 some people use to say their inbox is open.

It reads as mild. If you want it to carry a real complaint about being ignored, add words; the mailbox alone is easy to take as a neutral update.