Arrow Symbols: 53 Arrows and Pointers to Copy

The arrow in every aesthetic bio — ╰┈➤ — contains no arrow. It is two box-drawing characters borrowed from 1980s terminal graphics with a printer’s ornament stuck on the end. That is not a criticism; it is the reason it looks the way it does, and the reason it sometimes comes out broken on somebody else’s phone.

Last updated: 13 September 2026 · COOLMOJI Editorial Team

53 arrow symbols to copy

Grouped by weight and by what they are made of, because a hairline arrow and a solid arrowhead solve completely different problems. Tap any piece to copy it whole, exactly as published.

Plain arrows

Heavy pointers and arrowheads

Bio arrows

Loop and repeat

Direction sets

Arrows come from three different places, and it shows

Almost every arrow character in use belongs to one of three blocks, and you can tell them apart by eye once you know what you are looking at.

The Arrows block, U+2190 to U+21FF. → ← ⇒ ↔ and the rest. These are technical characters: mathematics, logic, flow diagrams. They are drawn at a hairline weight to sit inside a line of text without shouting, and they have been in fonts since 1993, which makes them the safest arrows there are.

The Dingbats block, U+2700 to U+27BF. ➜ ➤ ➢ ➵. These come from Hermann Zapf’s dingbat typeface, encoded wholesale so printers could set it digitally. They are ornaments, so they are heavier, blacker and more decorative than the technical arrows — ➤ is literally named BLACK RIGHTWARDS ARROWHEAD, because it is a shape rather than an operator.

The Box Drawing block, U+2500 to U+257F. ╰ and ┈ are BOX DRAWINGS LIGHT ARC UP AND RIGHT and BOX DRAWINGS LIGHT QUADRUPLE DASH HORIZONTAL. They exist so that a text terminal could draw boxes and tables out of characters. They were designed on the assumption that every character occupies an identical cell.

What the arrows are actually called

Every name and code point below was read from the Unicode character database rather than taken from another symbol site. Skim it once and the weight differences stop being mysterious: the technical arrows say ARROW, the ornamental ones say ARROWHEAD or FEATHERED, and that is exactly what they look like.

Why ╰┈➤ sometimes comes out broken

Box-drawing characters assume a monospaced grid. In a terminal every cell is the same width, so ╰ meets ┈ flush and the line looks continuous. A bio is not a terminal: it is set in a proportional font, and whether those two characters touch depends entirely on the metrics the platform happens to use.

So the same paste can look like one connected line on your phone and like a curve, a gap and three dashes on somebody else’s. There is nothing to fix in the string — it is doing what those characters were designed to do, in a place they were not designed for. If it has to look identical everywhere, drop the box drawing and use ➤ or ➜ on their own.

The second failure is subtler. ▶ is BLACK RIGHT-POINTING TRIANGLE, a text character, but add an invisible variation selector and it becomes ▶️, the emoji play button. They are the same code point with one hidden character between them, which is why an arrow can arrive coloured when you copied a black one. Our guide to real Unicode names covers how to spot that.

Where arrows survive and where they break

Bios and captions. Everything here works. The box-drawing sets are safe in the sense that they always render; they just do not always align.

Usernames and display names. The technical arrows pass nearly everywhere. The emoji forms — ▶️ ↩️ ⤵️ — are the ones that get stripped.

Anywhere text is monospaced. Code comments, terminals, some note apps. This is the one environment where the box-drawing arrows behave perfectly, because it is what they were built for.

Read aloud. A screen reader announces → as "rightwards arrow". Used once as a pointer that is helpful; used as a bullet on every line it becomes noise, which is the same argument we make about text dividers.

FAQ

Why does my ╰┈➤ look different on someone else’s phone?

The dashes and the curve are box-drawing characters that assume a fixed-width grid. In a proportional font their spacing is up to the platform, so the pieces may not meet. Nothing is wrong with what you copied.

What is the difference between → and ➤?

→ is RIGHTWARDS ARROW from the Arrows block, a hairline technical character. ➤ is BLACK RIGHTWARDS ARROWHEAD from Dingbats, a solid ornament. Use the first inside a sentence and the second as a bullet.

Why did my black triangle turn into a coloured play button?

An invisible variation selector came along with the copy and switched ▶ to its emoji presentation. Copy it again from the table above, which gives you the plain text character.

Can I use an arrow as a bullet point in a bio?

Yes, and it is one of the few decorations that earns its place, because it marks structure rather than adding noise. Use one shape consistently down the list rather than a different arrow on each line.

Which arrow is safest in a username?

→ or ➜. Both are from the 1993 Arrows block, both are inside the Basic Multilingual Plane, and both render on effectively every device that renders text at all.