One glyph doing two jobs, a right-pointing triangle fused with a double vertical bar. Pressing it plays whatever's paused and pauses whatever's running, built for remotes and media players that keep both controls under a single button, and loosely it covers hesitation as much as playback, a plan on or off depending on the moment.
What ⏯️ means
A ▶️ Play Button paired with two short parallel lines; indicating the 'pause'. The ⏯️ Play or Pause Button emoji refers to the button responsible and capable of both acts on audio and video platforms.
How and when to use it
- The ⏯️ may suggest that both 'play' and 'pause' fundamentally go together besides the fact that it saves keyboard space and enhances efficiency.
- Some metaphorical examples for the previous point would be - "Sometimes, it's alright to take a break before you buck up to move that mountain ⏯️" or "She was just gone for a couple of minutes. When she was back, we continued talking for hours ⏯️".
- Being able to pause in real-time music take some sort of power that roots in technological advancement. It suggests realistic continuity even in the lack of awareness.
- Instances for the previous use-case: "Let's get back together and pick up from where we left off ⏯️" or "If we physically apart for years, would you feel the same the next time you see me? ⏯️".
- While sharing music videos, audio clips, or any other such content on your social media handle or via direct message (DM), you could precede the link or post with ⏯️.
Other Names
- ⏯️ Play and Pause
- ⏯️ Play/Pause Button
- ⏯️ Play-Pause Symbol
- ⏯️ Black Right-Pointing Triangle With Double Vertical Bars
- ⏯️ Play Button and Pause Button Together
The lowdown
- Category
- Symbols › av-symbol
- Codepoints
U+23EF U+FE0F- Emoji version
- Emoji 1.0
- Shortcodes
:play_or_pause_button:GitHub- Keywords
- arrow, button, pause, play, right, triangle
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.
⚡ Quick round
Which joined the keyboard first — ⏯️ Play Or Pause Button or 🟩 Green Square?