About Clockwise Open Circle Arrow
Clockwise Open Circle Arrow is the Unicode character ↻ at codepoint U+21BB in the Arrows block of the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP).
Reference
A rotation arrow that Unicode does not treat as mathematical. It is general category So, East Asian Width Neutral, line-break class AL, and it carries neither Other_Math in PropList nor Math in the derived properties — unlike the plain directional arrows it sits beside, which are general category Sm and carry Math. Unicode's math-class table files the whole Arrows block as relations, which is where its only mathematical standing comes from. It has no emoji property of any kind, so it is text and stays text. Two HTML names. No annotation, no alias, no cross-reference in the chart.
Typical uses
- Rotation, in diagrams and in prose about direction
- Cycles and repetition, where an icon is not available
- Reload and refresh, by convention that the standard does not endorse
At a glance
- U+21BB, Arrows; Unicode 1.1 (1993); general category So
- East Asian Width Neutral; line break class AL; Bidi_Mirrored No
- No Math property, unlike the plain directional arrows
- HTML: ↻, ↻. No Windows-1252 slot, no emoji form
Historical Notes
Origins
A circular arrow means rotation, and has meant it in technical drawing for as long as there have been technical drawings. What is worth recording is not where the shape came from but what the standard declined to say about it.
Unicode
Unicode 1.1, released in 1993, in the Arrows block. The entry is bare: no annotation, no alias, no cross-reference. Where Unicode does bless a reload meaning it does so on other characters entirely, in the emoji blocks, which carry explicit notes to that effect. This one gets nothing.
The property that is missing
Thirty-one of the Arrows block's 112 assigned characters lack the derived Math property, and this is one of them: it carries neither Other_Math in PropList nor Math in the derived properties. Unicode's own property data does not treat it as mathematical at all, which is a fair description of what it is: a picture of rotation rather than a claim about anything.
Developer Notes
| Unicode Codepoint | |
| Decimal | |
| UTF-8 (hex) | |
| UTF-16 (hex) | |
| HEX Entity | |
| HTML Entity | |
| CSS (\xxxx) | |
| JavaScript | |
| Python |
How to Use Clockwise Open Circle Arrow
To use the Clockwise Open Circle Arrow symbol (↻) in HTML, insert the
entity ↻ directly into your markup. The decimal entity ↻ works in any HTML-serialised document.
In CSS pseudo-elements use content: '\21BB';.
In JavaScript and TypeScript the escape '\u21BB' evaluates to ↻. In Python source, write '\u21BB'.
The character encodes to E2 86 BB as UTF-8 bytes and 21BB as UTF-16 code units. Its decimal codepoint is 8635.
This is a text-based Unicode character. It will render in the current font on most platforms. If a font lacks this glyph, the browser may show a placeholder or fall back to a system font.
Things to know
- No emoji form exists. Adding a variation selector does nothing; if you need a coloured refresh button you need an icon or a different character.
- It is not the counterclockwise arrows emoji, which turns the other way — the name says so — and is frequently reached for as this character's emoji equivalent.
- No Math property, so it will not match a "is this mathematical" test that the other eight arrows pass.
- East Asian Width Neutral and line-break class AL: one terminal cell, in any locale.
- Two HTML names; ↻ is the shorter. Pattern_Syntax applies; no Windows-1252 slot; stable under all four normalisation forms.
In the Wild
On 5 August 2026 Wikipedia's article on the Arrows block showed the character once, as a specimen in its table of the block's contents. The absences are the more telling half. Wikipedia's article on clockwise motion carried none, and its article on rotation carried none either, although that page carried thirteen rightward arrows. Neither needed the character even while writing about the thing it draws.
That is consistent with what it is. The refresh icon is everywhere, and it is drawn — an SVG, a font glyph in an icon set, a button. It is almost never typed.
Pages change; this is what those showed on the day.
FAQ
Is this the refresh character?
It is the shape people mean by refresh. Unicode attaches no such meaning to it — no annotation, no alias. That reading is convention.
Does it have an emoji version?
No. It carries no emoji property at all, and no variation selector changes that.
What about the counterclockwise arrows button?
That is a different character and it turns the other way. It is not this one's emoji equivalent.
Why does it not get arrow spacing in maths?
Because Unicode does not give it the Math property, and typesetting systems that class it as an ordinary symbol rather than a relation space it accordingly.