Try Warning emoji
Edit the text, then change the size.
Meaning & usage
What does the Warning emoji mean?
Caution — read carefully before proceeding.
Urgent caution. It tells readers to slow down and notice risk or important information, making it useful before deadlines, hazards and exceptions.
How to use ⚠️ naturally
Important notices and disclaimers.
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, Warning 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 black exclamation mark in a yellow triangle, the international hazard sign. It is real signage, standardised long before it was a character.
- Today
How its use evolved
Important notices and disclaimers.
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.
Road closed after 8 PM ⚠️
Save your work before updating ⚠️
Spoilers in the next paragraph ⚠️
When to use it
Using ⚠️ clearly
Important notices and disclaimers. It lands as caution or alert 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 warning emoji
What does ⚠️ mean in a text message?
Caution — read carefully before proceeding. Urgent caution. It tells readers to slow down and notice risk or important information, making it useful before deadlines, hazards and exceptions.
Is ⚠️ always positive?
Not always. Its usual readings are caution, alert, danger, and irony or the relationship between the people can flip any of them.
Why does ⚠️ look different on another device?
U+26A0 U+FE0F 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 warning 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 warning 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.
Warning or Red Exclamation Mark?
❗ adds urgency to anything. ⚠️ specifically signals risk, so it carries more weight in instructions.
Warning or Prohibited?
🚫 says not allowed; ⚠️ says be careful. One forbids, the other cautions.
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+26A0 U+FE0F | 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 | \26A0 \FE0F | For the content property. Keep the quotes around the whole value. | |
| JavaScript | \u{26A0}\u{FE0F} | A string-literal escape. Needs the u flag inside a regular expression. | |
| URL-encoded | %E2%9A%A0%EF%B8%8F | Percent-encoded UTF-8, for query strings and API requests. |
Reference card
Emoji details
- Unicode
- U+26A0 U+FE0F
- Category
- Symbols & Reactions
- Also known as
- cautionalertdanger
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