White Circle Emoji
A hollow light disc, the empty counterpart to the black circle.
Try White Circle emoji
Edit the text, then change the size.
Meaning & usage
What does the White Circle emoji mean?
A hollow light disc, the empty counterpart to the black circle.
Empty rather than negative. Paired with ⚫ it makes a filled-and-unfilled scale, which is how it ends up in ratings and progress markers.
How to use ⚪ naturally
Unfilled states, checklists and paired legends.
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, White Circle 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
An unfilled circle, the counterpart to the black one. The pair make a filled-and-empty scale, which is how they end up in ratings and checklists.
- Today
How its use evolved
Unfilled states, checklists and paired legends.
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.
⚪ Still to do
⚪ Available, ⚫ taken
Empty circle means we have not heard back yet ⚪
When to use it
Using ⚪ clearly
Unfilled states, checklists and paired legends. It lands as white circle 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 white circle emoji
What does ⚪ mean in a text message?
A hollow light disc, the empty counterpart to the black circle. Empty rather than negative. Paired with ⚫ it makes a filled-and-unfilled scale, which is how it ends up in ratings and progress markers.
Is ⚪ always positive?
Not always. Its usual readings are white circle emoji, ⚪ meaning, white dot emoji, and irony or the relationship between the people can flip any of them.
Why does ⚪ look different on another device?
U+26AA 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 white circle 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 white circle 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.
White Circle or Black Circle?
⚪ is not negative, only unfilled. The meaning of the pair depends entirely on which one you declare as filled.
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+26AA | 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 | \26AA | For the content property. Keep the quotes around the whole value. | |
| JavaScript | \u{26AA} | A string-literal escape. Needs the u flag inside a regular expression. | |
| URL-encoded | %E2%9A%AA | Percent-encoded UTF-8, for query strings and API requests. |
Reference card
Emoji details
- Unicode
- U+26AA
- Category
- Symbols & Reactions
- Also known as
- white circle emoji⚪ meaningwhite dot emoji
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