arrow symbols
Arrow symbols
Every direction, in thin, double, curved and heavy weights.
59 symbols · tap any one to copy
Arrows
Handy for pointing at a link or a call to action, showing before → after in a tweet, or building step lists where you cannot use real formatting.
Arrows got their own Unicode block early, running from U+2190 to U+21FF, because they were needed everywhere at once: maths papers, flowcharts, terminal interfaces and the keycap legends on old keyboards. That is 112 characters of pure direction, and the naming is entirely mechanical, so U+2192 is officially "rightwards arrow" and its double-stroked neighbour is "rightwards double arrow". Once you know the pattern you can guess what exists.
The single and double strokes are not just two weights of the same idea. In mathematical writing they mean different things: → maps one thing to another, while ⇒ states that one thing implies another, and a proof that mixes them up says something it did not intend. Outside maths nobody enforces the distinction, but it explains why both sets exist and why the double arrows look heavier and more emphatic even in casual use.
The long forms ⟶ ⟵ ⟷ ⟹ ⟸ ⟺ come from a later block, Supplemental Arrows-A, and they were added specifically so that an arrow could span a gap in an equation without looking stubby next to a wide expression. They are useful for the same reason in a bio or a tweet: a long arrow between two words reads as a transition, where a short one reads as a bullet point.
Then there are the fat arrows, ➔ ➜ ➤ ➥ ➫ ➯ ➲ ➳ and the rest of that run. Those are from Dingbats, drawn as display ornaments rather than notation, which is exactly why they look bolder and more casual beside a plain →. They were designed to start a line and pull the eye, so they work well as list markers and badly inside a sentence.
One behaviour catches people out. Brackets carry a Unicode property called Bidi_Mirrored, meaning they automatically flip when they appear in right-to-left text such as Arabic or Hebrew, so an opening bracket stays an opening bracket visually. Almost no arrow has that property. Paste → into an Arabic sentence and it keeps pointing right even though the reading direction has reversed, which can make a step list point backwards. If you write for a right-to-left audience, pick the arrow that matches the reading direction by hand.
Common questions
What is the difference between → and ⇒?
Visually one stroke against two, but in maths they carry separate meanings: the single arrow describes a mapping or a transition, and the double arrow states an implication. In everyday writing the double arrow simply reads as heavier and more emphatic, which makes it a good choice for headings.
Why did my arrow turn into a coloured image?
You copied one of the emoji arrows such as ⬅️ ⬆️ or ⬇️, which carry an emoji variation selector and render as pictures. The text arrows ← ↑ ↓ from the main arrows block behave like letters and stay the colour of your text, so use those when you want the arrow to blend in.
Do arrows flip in Arabic or Hebrew text?
No. Unlike brackets, arrows are not marked as mirroring characters, so a rightwards arrow still points right inside right-to-left text even though the words run the other way. Choose the arrow that visually matches the reading direction rather than assuming the layout engine will handle it.
Can I make an arrow longer or stretch it?
Not by styling, since plain text has no way to scale a single glyph. What you can do is pick a longer character: ⟶ and ⟷ are drawn noticeably wider than → and ↔ and were designed for exactly that purpose. Repeating a dash before the arrowhead is a fallback but rarely joins up cleanly.