How to type Watch
To type Watch (⌚), press Alt + 8986 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+231A directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 231a on Linux, or 231a then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
Watch
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+231A
- Windows
- Alt + 8986 needs regedit
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 8986 | 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+231A | WATCH |
Other symbols
⌚ lives in the Miscellaneous Technical block (U+2300-U+23FF), technical and interface characters, including the command key symbol. Within Unicode it is classified as So, a symbol.
What Watch is used for
Unicode publishes a second list of names for ⌚ in CLDR, the keywords its own search data offers rather than the formal name, and they are clock and time. Those words are what somebody looking for this character is liable to type when Watch is not the name they know it by, and the search on the symbol lists matches them as well as the Unicode name.
What Unicode says about Watch
The code chart points from ⌚ to alarm clock (U+23F0) and clock face one oclock (U+1F550). These are the characters the standard thinks you might have meant instead, which makes them the ones worth checking when Watch looks nearly right but not quite.
How Watch behaves in software
⌚ takes two columns in a terminal, the same as a CJK character, so a table padded with spaces to a fixed width will not line up unless whatever is drawing it counts display width rather than characters. 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.
Every way to write Watch
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+231A |
| Decimal | 8986 |
| UTF-8 bytes | E2 8C 9A |
| UTF-16 bytes | 23 1A |
| HTML entity | ⌚ |
| HTML numeric | ⌚ or ⌚ |
| CSS | \231A |
| JavaScript | \u231A |
| Python | \u231A |
| URL-encoded | %E2%8C%9A |
| SVG | 231A.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If ⌚ looks different on someone else's screen
⌚ is drawn by the colour emoji font on the reader's own device and not by anything this site ships, so it is a different picture on Android, on Windows and on an iPhone, and a printed document usually renders it flat and black. Where you need the flat form deliberately, follow it with the variation selector U+FE0E; U+FE0F asks for the colour one. Neither selector changes what the text says, and both survive copy and paste.