Inbox Tray Emoji
A desk tray with an arrow pointing into it, the icon for receiving or downloading.
Try Inbox Tray emoji
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Meaning & usage
What does the Inbox Tray emoji mean?
A desk tray with an arrow pointing into it, the icon for receiving or downloading.
Administrative. It is the receiving half of a pair with 📤, and reads as a system action rather than a human one.
How to use 📥 naturally
Downloads, incoming mail and anything being received.
Object emoji usually point to an activity or topic rather than an emotion. They work well as labels in lists, captions and announcements, where the image makes the subject easy to scan.
From standard to slang
The history of 📥
- 2010
First defined as emoji
According to Unicode’s Emoji Versions data, Inbox Tray 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
A desk tray with an arrow descending into it, from the paper in-tray of an office desk. It is drawn as the receiving half of a pair with 📤, and both predate the software meaning they now carry.
- Today
How its use evolved
Downloads, incoming mail and anything being received.
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.
Files are in the shared folder 📥
Downloaded and working 📥
Everything landed, thanks 📥
When to use it
Using 📥 clearly
Downloads, incoming mail and anything being received. It lands as inbox 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 inbox tray emoji
What does 📥 mean in a text message?
A desk tray with an arrow pointing into it, the icon for receiving or downloading. Administrative. It is the receiving half of a pair with 📤, and reads as a system action rather than a human one.
Is 📥 always positive?
Not always. Its usual readings are inbox emoji, 📥 meaning, download emoji, and irony or the relationship between the people can flip any of them.
Why does 📥 look different on another device?
U+1F4E5 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 inbox tray 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 inbox tray 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+1F4E5 | 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 | \1F4E5 | For the content property. Keep the quotes around the whole value. | |
| JavaScript | \u{1F4E5} | A string-literal escape. Needs the u flag inside a regular expression. | |
| URL-encoded | %F0%9F%93%A5 | Percent-encoded UTF-8, for query strings and API requests. |
Reference card
Emoji details
- Unicode
- U+1F4E5
- Category
- Objects & Tech
- Also known as
- inbox emoji📥 meaningdownload emoji
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