How to type Black Circle
To type Black Circle (●), press Alt + 9679 on Windows, holding Alt while typing the digits on the numeric keypad, or write ● in HTML. On any system you can copy it from this page, or enter its codepoint U+25CF directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 25cf on Linux, or 25cf then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
Black Circle
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+25CF
- Windows
- Alt + 9679 needs regedit
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 9679 | Above 255, so Windows will not accept it as typed. Copy the character instead. |
| Mac | N/A | Press the keys together. |
| HTML | ● | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+25CF | BLACK CIRCLE |
Symbols related to Black Circle
These are filed under circle in CLDR, the keyword list Unicode publishes alongside the names.
Other symbols
● lives in the Geometric Shapes block (U+25A0-U+25FF), squares, circles, triangles and diamonds. Within Unicode it is classified as So, a symbol.
What Black Circle is used for
In mathematical notation ● is an ordinary symbol: it carries no special spacing and sits in an expression the way a letter does, standing for a thing rather than doing something to the things around it. That is the classification unicode-math gives it, and it is what decides how the symbol is set: $\mdlgblkcircle$ in LaTeX, in maths mode rather than in a sentence.
Unicode publishes a second list of names for ● in CLDR, the keywords its own search data offers rather than the formal name, and it is filled circle. That word is what somebody looking for this character is liable to type when Black Circle is not the name they know it by, and the search on the symbol lists matches it as well as the Unicode name.
What Unicode says about Black Circle
The code chart points from ● to black large circle (U+2B24), new moon symbol (U+1F311) and large red circle (U+1F534). These are the characters the standard thinks you might have meant instead, which makes them the ones worth checking when Black Circle looks nearly right but not quite.
How Black Circle behaves in software
● is East Asian Ambiguous: one column in a Western locale and two in a CJK one. That is why a table that lines up on your machine can break on somebody else's, with no change to the text at all. It carries no direction of its own, so in a line that mixes English with Arabic or Hebrew it takes the direction of the text around it rather than forcing one.
What people ask about Black Circle
What does black circle with star mean on snapchat?
● is BLACK CIRCLE, encoded at U+25CF. It is distinct from black large circle (U+2B24) and new moon symbol (U+1F311), which the chart lists beside it precisely because they are confused for one another.
Every way to write Black Circle
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+25CF |
| Decimal | 9679 |
| UTF-8 bytes | E2 97 8F |
| UTF-16 bytes | 25 CF |
| HTML entity | ● |
| HTML numeric | ● or ● |
| CSS | \25CF |
| JavaScript | \u25CF |
| Python | \u25CF |
| URL-encoded | %E2%97%8F |
| LaTeX, in maths mode | $\mdlgblkcircle$ |
| SVG | 25CF.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If ● arrives as â—�
One character has become three, which is what a three-byte UTF-8 sequence looks like when each byte is read separately: E2 97 8F read as Windows-1252 gives exactly â—�. The text is intact and the damage is in the reading, so setting the reader to UTF-8 restores it and retyping does not. A rectangle instead of the mojibake means the opposite: the encoding is right and the font has no glyph at U+25CF, which for a character this far outside Latin-1 is common in older office fonts.