What ◀️ means
It usually means go back or rethink what came before.
After a correction, awkward confession, or change of mind, ◀️ works as a visual rewind: the sender wants to revisit the earlier point or take back momentum. Where emoji styling is missing, it shows as a plain black left-pointing triangle with the same meaning.
Neutral in interfaces; lightly theatrical in personal messages. Alone, it can sound like "take that back."
What it means when someone sends it to you
3 readingsAfter a correction or regret
Back up; reconsider the previous thought.
Beside a song or video
Reverse or rewind playback.
Before a referenced earlier point
Return to something already mentioned.
Don't confuse it with
2Worth knowing
- The characters behind ◀️ existed in Unicode 8 years before anyone was allowed to draw them in colour: Unicode 3.2 in 2002, emoji presentation in 2010.
- ◀️ 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
1◀️ rewind or previous?
It can be either, and context decides. In a row of media controls, read it as reverse or rewind; for the previous track, ⏮️ is clearer.
How to type ◀️
Windows
Win+.Open the emoji picker and search “reverse button”.
macOS
Control+Command+Spaceopens the character viewer.
iOS / Android
Emoji keyboard → search “reverse button”.
Chat apps
:arrow_backward:the common shortcode; support varies by platform.HTML
◀️Codes and encoding2 code points
HTML decimal
◀️
HTML hex
◀️
CSS content
content: "\25C0\FE0F";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E2%97%80%EF%B8%8F
1
On screen
2
Code points
2
JS .length
6
UTF-8 bytes
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.