What ⏸️ means
⏸️ is the pause button emoji, filed under Symbols in the av-symbol subgroup of the Unicode emoji index.
It was added in Emoji 0.7 (2014) and the underlying characters entered Unicode in version 7.0 (2014).
How it is encoded
⏸️ is a sequence of 2 code points (U+23F8 U+FE0F), joined so that they render as one glyph. Software that counts characters will report 2, not 1 — the usual source of broken emoji handling.
It is RGI (recommended for general interchange), so every major platform ships artwork for it.
Don't confuse it with
4Worth knowing
- ⏸️ is not one character. It is 2 of them glued together, which is why deleting it sometimes takes two presses of backspace and why it breaks character counters.
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 ⏸️
:double_vertical_bar:the common shortcode; support varies by platform.⏸️Codes and encoding2 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.