Combining enclosing keycap Emoji

Symbols

A transparent modifier character that functions as a structural overlay, placing a square border around the preceding alphanumeric or symbol character. It transforms standard text characters into a button-like format.

Usage Context

This character is the mechanical backbone of the keycap series. It is used to generate specific icons like 1⃣ or #⃣ by combining the base character with this enclosing mark. Users rarely input this character alone, as it requires a companion character to create a visible, boxed-in output.

History

Included in Unicode 3.0 in 1999, this character was developed to ensure that legacy Japanese mobile handsets could render numeric buttons and command symbols correctly. By using a combining character, engineers avoided the need to create thousands of individual, hard-coded images for every possible button combination.

Details

Glyph

⃣

Unicode

U+20E3

Shortcode

:emoji_u20e3:

HTML Entity

⃣

Specifications

Vendor Google

Category Symbols

Subcategory keycap

Unicode Version 6.0

Emoji Version 1.0

License CC-BY 4.0

Google Noto License

Emoji graphics by Twitter/X, licensed under CC-BY 4.0

Noto Color Emoji graphics are copyrighted by Google Inc. and licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. Font files may also be subject to the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1.

Apache 2.0 SIL OFL 1.1 Noto Repository