Eject symbol
Eject. A triangle pointing up above a bar ejects a disc, tape or other removable media.
How to read it
The triangle over a bar is the eject symbol, which Unicode encodes as U+23CF and describes as the user-interface symbol to eject media. Older Apple keyboards had a Media Eject key: Apple’s list of Mac keyboard shortcuts from 2017 includes Control with the Media Eject key, which brings up the choice to restart, sleep or shut down.
How it reached Unicode
Apple proposed the symbol to Unicode on 2 November 2001, for keyboards, interface elements and documentation. In the proposal Alain LaBonté is quoted as saying the eject symbol was not registered in ISO 7000 but was in IEC 60417, Graphical symbols for use on equipment, and in ISO/IEC 13251, a collection of symbols for office equipment. Unicode lists it among its keyboard and UI symbols.
Where you’ll see it
Apple’s guide to ejecting CDs and DVDs mentions an Eject key, an Eject button beside a disc’s name in the Finder sidebar, and an Eject menu that can be shown in the menu bar. Windows calls its taskbar icon Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media, and its menu offers Eject for each device.
Eject or caps lock
An upward arrow standing on a bar is caps lock: Unicode’s upwards white arrow from bar, U+21EA, carries the note “caps lock”. Eject is a triangle over a bar, without the arrow’s stem. The plain upwards white arrow, U+21E7, is shift.
Read next
- Next in Power and device symbolsMute symbolMute. A loudspeaker crossed out means the sound is off.
- The same shape in African flagsFlag of the ComorosThe Comoros flag is four horizontal stripes, yellow, white, red and blue from the top, with a green triangle along the pole holding a white crescent and four white stars in a line between its tips. Norway’s Store norske leksikon explains the crescent as the symbol of Islam and the four stars as the four islands of the Comoros; Lex says the four stripes are said to stand for the islands too.
More power and device symbols
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols drawn with lines or triangles.
Sources
- Miscellaneous Technical, Range: 2300–23FF (code chart), The Unicode Standard, Unicode Consortium, U+23CF
- Mac keyboard shortcuts (2017 edition), Apple Support (Internet Archive copy), Sleep, log out, and shut down shortcuts
- Proposal to Add the Eject Key Symbol to Unicode, L2/01-414, John H. Jenkins, Apple Computer, Inc. (Unicode Technical Committee document register)
- Arrows: Range 2190–21FF (code chart), The Unicode Standard, Version 18.0, Unicode Consortium, U+21E7, U+21EA
- Eject CDs and DVDs from your Mac, Mac User Guide, Apple Support
- Safely remove hardware in Windows, Microsoft Support
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 3, 2026. How we research
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