What 📼 means
Recorded video, especially the old-school tape kind.
The cassette gives a home movie or archived clip a rewind-era feel, from the days when you played tapes in a VCR and rewound them before returning them. A deliberately grainy edit can borrow that look without ever having been on tape.
Retro and lightly nostalgic, especially beside older footage.
Do not assume the video was actually recorded on VHS.
What it means when someone sends it to you
3 readingsAfter a childhood photo
A nostalgic memory, possibly old home footage.
Before a video link
“Video” or “watch this,” not necessarily a tape.
In a joke about obsolete tech
A nod to physical media and pre-streaming habits.
Don't confuse it with
1Combination ideas
1A suggested pairing for an old-school movie night in front of the TV.
Worth knowing
- 📼 is a single code point, so it survives copying through almost anything — old databases, SMS gateways, printer drivers.
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 “videocassette”.
macOS
Control+Command+Spaceopens the character viewer.
iOS / Android
Emoji keyboard → search “videocassette”.
Chat apps
:vhs:the common shortcode; support varies by platform.HTML
📼Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
📼
HTML hex
📼
CSS content
content: "\1F4FC";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%F0%9F%93%BC
1
On screen
1
Code points
2
JS .length
4
UTF-8 bytes
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.