Try Star emoji
Edit the text, then change the size.
Meaning & usage
What does the Star emoji mean?
Favourite, rating or standout quality.
Positive recognition, quality or importance. It can mark a favourite, represent a rating or simply add a bright decorative accent.
How to use ⭐ naturally
Reviews, highlights and bookmarks.
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, Star 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 five-pointed star, filled. It predates emoji as a typographic character and still needs a variation selector on some platforms to render in colour.
- Today
How its use evolved
Reviews, highlights and bookmarks.
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.
Five-star service ⭐
Saving this one as a favourite ⭐
You were the star of the show ⭐
When to use it
Using ⭐ clearly
Reviews, highlights and bookmarks. It lands as favorite or rating 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 star emoji
What does ⭐ mean in a text message?
Favourite, rating or standout quality. Positive recognition, quality or importance. It can mark a favourite, represent a rating or simply add a bright decorative accent.
Is ⭐ always positive?
Not always. Its usual readings are favorite, rating, shine, and irony or the relationship between the people can flip any of them.
Why does ⭐ look different on another device?
U+2B50 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 star 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 star 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+2B50 | 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 | \2B50 | For the content property. Keep the quotes around the whole value. | |
| JavaScript | \u{2B50} | A string-literal escape. Needs the u flag inside a regular expression. | |
| URL-encoded | %E2%AD%90 | Percent-encoded UTF-8, for query strings and API requests. |
Reference card
Emoji details
- Unicode
- U+2B50
- Category
- Symbols & Reactions
- Also known as
- favoriteratingshine
Put it in a message
When ⭐ is the right choice
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