Share icon
Three dots joined by two lines are the share icon: it opens the ways to send a page, photo or file to someone else. Apple devices use a different share icon, a square with an arrow pointing up out of it.
How to read it
Alex King, a web developer and early WordPress contributor, drew the connected-dots icon in December 2006 as a generic icon for sharing a web page, whether by adding it to a social bookmarking site or emailing it to someone. He wrote that the connected dots stand for information passing from one place to others, and that he made it green to reinforce the “go” of the action. King released it under open-source licences (GPL, LGPL, BSD and Creative Commons Attribution 2.5) and sold it to ShareThis in 2007, which went on distributing it under the same licences until 2012. He noted Google using it for a sharing service in 2007, in the Android Market app in 2011 and on Google’s homepage in 2015.
Also searched as: share button, share icon, share icon android, share icon iphone, share symbol.
Android and Apple
The Australian eSafety Commissioner’s Be Connected icon guide shows two share icons side by side: “Share (Android)”, the three joined dots, and “Share (iOS)”, a square with an arrow pointing up out of it. Google’s Material icon set includes both, named share and ios_share.
What King meant it for
King wrote that the icon should stand for sharing to many sites and channels, not sharing to any one service, and he criticised a 2007 Google pop-up that put it on the tab that posted only to Google.
Read next
- Next in Interface iconsSave icon (floppy disk)A floppy disk is the save icon: it stores the file or document you are working on.
- The same shape in African flagsFlag of EthiopiaEthiopia’s flag is green, yellow and red in equal horizontal stripes with a blue disc in the centre holding a yellow star of equal lines with yellow rays. Ethiopia’s Flag Proclamation makes the green labour, fertility and development, the yellow hope, justice and equality, and the red sacrifice and heroism for freedom and equality; the blue disc is peace and the star the unity of Ethiopia’s nations, nationalities and peoples.
More interface icons
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols drawn with circles or lines.
Sources
- “Share This” Icon Concept #1, Alex King, 4 December 2006, alexking.org
- Share Icon (project page), Alex King, alexking.org
- Google Using the Share Icon, Alex King, 21 September 2007, alexking.org
- Share Icon in Android Market, Alex King, 5 November 2011, alexking.org
- Share Icon on Google Homepage, Alex King, 22 April 2015, alexking.org
- Which icon is that? (Be Connected visual glossary of icons), Be Connected guide to common technology icons, poster version 9, eSafety Commissioner, Australian Government, Poster labels (icons noted in NOTES.md)
- Material Icons codepoints (MaterialIcons-Regular.codepoints), Google Material Design icons, font/MaterialIcons-Regular.codepoints, Google (material-design-icons repository on GitHub), ios_share, share
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 14, 2026. How we research
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