🕹️

Joystick Emoji 🕹️

A joystick with a red ball-top grip on a black base, styled after an arcade cabinet rather than a modern controller. It signals retro gaming specifically, 80s arcades, classic consoles, where 🎮 Video Game reads as anything current, and it gets a second life for grabbing control of a situation.

What 🕹️ means

A black square base with a springy circular protrusion at the middle that holds a stick ending in a red bulb. Next to this design is a red button, which can sometimes be a pair.

The 🕹️ Joystick emoji represents an input device, which is used either while video gaming or while appying computer graphics. However, it can also refer to a 'gear' machine used in automobiles.

How and when to use it

Since 🕹️ may also represent the gear in a large vehicle, starting with a four-wheeler, you can use this emoji to indicate 'gear' in different contexts. Like, "Alright! You better gear up! 🕹️" or "Um. I think there's something wrong with the truck's gear 🕹️".
If you're sharing content on arcade games; new machinery set up in your locality, a super cool arcade you went to, or even a news post relating to gaming and arcades, you can use 🕹️ in those captions.
You could also use 🕹️ to indicate 'control', in a text message, a post caption, or even in the comments section for a post that went out of hand. For instance, "FINALLY it's my life and MY rules! 🕹️".
Similarly, you can use 🕹️ even while saying 'play' or meaning it in any context. For example, "All work and no play will make you sad and grey! 🕹️".

Other Names

🕹️ Controller
🕹️ Control Stick
🕹️ Gaming Stick
🕹️ Gear
🕹️ Control Lever
🕹️ Digital Joystick
🕹️ Analog Joystick
🕹️ Paddle Joystick

The lowdown

Category: Activities › game
Codepoints: U+1F579 U+FE0F
Emoji version: Emoji 0.7
Shortcodes: :joystick: GitHub
Keywords: game, joystick, video, videogame

How it looks across platforms

Seeing a blank box instead of the emoji somewhere? Here's why that happens. Curious why the designs above don't match to begin with? Here's why that happens too.