⬅️

Left Arrow Emoji ⬅️

A horizontal arrow pointing left, the reverse of ➡️ Right Arrow and the shape every back button in every app borrows. In a caption it points backward at something already said, referencing an earlier message without repeating it, or marks a step retraced rather than a step taken.

What ⬅️ means

A white arrow, short and thick in design, pointing to the left within a blue square that's been blunted out at the edges. The ⬅️ Left Arrow emoji indicates the 'left' direction, as the name suggests, and the 'West' in a navigational compass.

How and when to use it

More often than not, ⬅️ is interpreted as 'backspace' in the digital world. Hence, this emoji would suggest something that's deletable and reversible in a sense.
Some instances for the previous point: "Make mistakes while you still can ⬅️", "It's not every time that you have the grace of undoing your terrible things ⬅️", or "I've deleted so many contacts on my cell ⬅️".
Like the 'digital world', there's another sub-space; social media. From this perspective, ⬅️ could suggest a 'throwback' as well, like TBT (Throwback Thursday), etc. So, while sharing some throwback memories on your social media handle or otherwise, you can use ⬅️.
You could use ⬅️ even while signifying suggesting 'the opposite' of something or the 'other way around'. For example, "You'd have to get to it the other way around ⬅️" or "Try all possibilities. Sometimes the solution lies in the route we fail to rationalize ⬅️".

Other Names

⬅️ Backspace
⬅️ Delete
⬅️ Left Turn
⬅️ West/Western
⬅️ Arrow Pointing Left
⬅️ Left Pointing Arrow

The lowdown

Category: Symbols › arrow
Codepoints: U+2B05 U+FE0F
Emoji version: Emoji 0.6
Shortcodes: :arrow_left: GitHub
Keywords: arrow, cardinal, direction, left, west

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.