No Entry Emoji
A red circle with a white bar, the road sign meaning do not proceed.
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Meaning & usage
What does the No Entry emoji mean?
A red circle with a white bar, the road sign meaning do not proceed.
Absolute and impersonal. It is a road sign, so it carries the flat authority of signage rather than a person's opinion, which is why it reads as firmer than a written refusal.
How to use ⛔ naturally
Hard stops, closed routes and marking something as off limits.
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, No Entry 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 white horizontal bar in a red circle, the road sign for no entry. It is genuine signage and carries the flatness of signage with it.
- Today
How its use evolved
Hard stops, closed routes and marking something as off limits.
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.
That road is closed until the end of the month ⛔
Staff only past this point ⛔
Do not merge this until the tests pass ⛔
When to use it
Using ⛔ clearly
Hard stops, closed routes and marking something as off limits. It lands as no entry 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 no entry emoji
What does ⛔ mean in a text message?
A red circle with a white bar, the road sign meaning do not proceed. Absolute and impersonal. It is a road sign, so it carries the flat authority of signage rather than a person's opinion, which is why it reads as firmer than a written refusal.
Is ⛔ always positive?
Not always. Its usual readings are no entry emoji, ⛔ meaning, do not enter emoji, and irony or the relationship between the people can flip any of them.
Why does ⛔ look different on another device?
U+26D4 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 no entry 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 no entry 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.
Easily confused
⛔ compared with similar emoji
These sit close enough in meaning that people reach for the wrong one. Here is what actually separates them.
No Entry or Prohibited?
🚫 is a generic crossed circle that can forbid anything. ⛔ is specifically the road sign for do not proceed, so it reads as a closed route rather than a banned activity.
No Entry or Cross Mark?
❌ marks something as wrong or rejected after the fact. ⛔ stops it happening in the first place.
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+26D4 | 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 | \26D4 | For the content property. Keep the quotes around the whole value. | |
| JavaScript | \u{26D4} | A string-literal escape. Needs the u flag inside a regular expression. | |
| URL-encoded | %E2%9B%94 | Percent-encoded UTF-8, for query strings and API requests. |
Reference card
Emoji details
- Unicode
- U+26D4
- Category
- Symbols & Reactions
- Also known as
- no entry emoji⛔ meaningdo not enter emoji
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