Arrow Leftwards Arrow With Tail And Loop
About this character
The character ↿ is known as Arrow Leftwards Arrow With Tail And Loop and carries the Unicode code point U+21BF, which is 8639 in decimal. It belongs to the Arrows block (U+2190–U+21FF), which gathers single, double and curved arrows used in typography, mathematics and user interfaces.
In memory, ↿ takes 3 bytes in UTF-8 (0xE2 0x86 0xBF) and 1 in UTF-16 (0x21BF). That difference is why badly configured forms or databases garble this character: they assume one byte per character.
How to type ↿
| System | What to do |
|---|---|
| Windows | In Word or WordPad, type 21BF and press Alt + X to turn the code into the character. |
| macOS | On a Mac, open the Character Viewer with Ctrl + ⌘ + Space and search for “Arrow Leftwards Arrow With Tail And Loop”. |
| Linux | On Linux (GTK), type Ctrl + ⇧ + U, 21BF then press Enter. |
| HTML / Web | In an HTML page, write ↿. Use \21BF in CSS, \u21BF in JavaScript and \u21BF in Python. |
| On this site | The simplest route is the Copy button above: the character goes straight to your clipboard, ready to paste anywhere. |
Keyboards that include ↿
This character is not on any common physical layout, so the Copy button above is the quickest way to get it into a document.
Codes and encodings
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Code point | U+21BF |
| Unicode block | Arrows (U+2190–U+21FF) |
| Decimal | 8639 |
| Hexadecimal | 0x21BF |
| Octal | 020677 |
| Binary | 10000110111111 |
| UTF-8 bytes | 0xE2 0x86 0xBF |
| UTF-16 units | 0x21BF |
| Named HTML entity | None |
| Decimal HTML entity | ↿ |
| Hex HTML entity | ↿ |
| CSS escape | \21BF |
| JavaScript escape | \u21BF |
| Python escape | \u21BF |
| URL encoding | %E2%86%BF |
Frequently asked questions
What is the Unicode code for ↿?
Its code point is U+21BF, which is 8639 in decimal and 020677 in octal. In HTML you can write it as ↿ or ↿.
Why does ↿ show up as a box or a question mark?
An empty box means the font has no glyph for U+21BF. The character is still in the text: switching to a font that covers the block (Noto, DejaVu or Segoe UI Symbol) makes it appear.
Can I use ↿ in a filename, a URL or a password?
In a URL it must be encoded as %E2%86%BF. Modern filesystems accept it, though it is still risky when moving files between systems. For passwords, some forms reject non-ASCII characters outright.