Free Button Emoji
The word FREE in a blue square, one of a set of English-language buttons.
Try Free Button emoji
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Meaning & usage
What does the Free Button emoji mean?
The word FREE in a blue square, one of a set of English-language buttons.
Promotional and a little loud. It is one of the English-language button emoji, so it does not travel across languages the way a symbol would.
How to use 🆓 naturally
Giveaways, no-cost offers and anything being handed out.
Reaction symbols work like visual emphasis: they reinforce a word, rate an idea or replace a short response. Repetition normally increases intensity, but it can also make a message feel more performative.
From standard to slang
The history of 🆓
- 2010
First defined as emoji
According to Unicode’s Emoji Versions data, Free Button was first defined as emoji in Emoji 0.6, dated 2010. That label is retrospective: Unicode applied it later to the early mobile core it inherited from the Japanese carriers.
- Before the keyboard
Its visual roots
The word FREE in a blue rounded square, from the same English-language button set as 🆗 and 🆕. These were encoded because Japanese carriers shipped them, not because Unicode wanted words in pictures.
- Today
How its use evolved
Giveaways, no-cost offers and anything being handed out.
Dates follow Unicode’s official Emoji Versions chart. Versions before Emoji 1.0 are labelled retrospectively. See the history of emoji.
In conversation
Examples of 🆓 in messages
These examples show the emoji in complete messages, where the words make its intended tone easier to read.
Two spare tickets, first to reply 🆓
Sofa going, collection only 🆓
Workshop is open to everyone 🆓
When to use it
Using 🆓 clearly
Giveaways, no-cost offers and anything being handed out. It lands as free emoji or 🆓 meaning when the rest of the message supports that reading, and it is the surrounding words that do the deciding — so in a sensitive, professional or cross-cultural conversation, say the thing outright as well.
Common questions
About the free button emoji
What does 🆓 mean in a text message?
The word FREE in a blue square, one of a set of English-language buttons. Promotional and a little loud. It is one of the English-language button emoji, so it does not travel across languages the way a symbol would.
Is 🆓 always positive?
Not always. Its usual readings are free emoji, 🆓 meaning, free button emoji, and irony or the relationship between the people can flip any of them.
Why does 🆓 look different on another device?
U+1F193 identifies the emoji; the picture is a font, drawn separately by Apple, Google, Microsoft and Samsung. Only the artwork changes, never the character.
How do I copy and paste the free button emoji?
Use the copy button at the top of this page. 🆓 is a character, not an image, so it pastes into messages, captions and filenames as ordinary text.
When was the free button emoji introduced?
Unicode’s Emoji Versions data first records 🆓 as emoji in Emoji 0.6, dated 2010. Early emoji version numbers can be retrospective, so this date describes its place in the standardised emoji set rather than the first-ever appearance of the underlying symbol.
For developers
🆓 in code
Every value below is generated from the character itself, so it stays correct even where a file encoding cannot hold the emoji directly.
| Format | Value | When to use it | Copy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode | U+1F193 | The standard reference. Use it to search a character map or a spec. | |
| HTML (hex) | 🆓 | For HTML and XML. Safe in files that are not saved as UTF-8. | |
| HTML (decimal) | 🆓 | The same reference in decimal. Both render identically. | |
| CSS | \1F193 | For the content property. Keep the quotes around the whole value. | |
| JavaScript | \u{1F193} | A string-literal escape. Needs the u flag inside a regular expression. | |
| URL-encoded | %F0%9F%86%93 | Percent-encoded UTF-8, for query strings and API requests. |
Reference card
Emoji details
- Unicode
- U+1F193
- Category
- Symbols & Reactions
- Also known as
- free emoji🆓 meaningfree button emoji
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