Stop symbol
A filled square means stop: it stops playback or recording.
Easily confused with
How to read it
The square is the stop symbol, encoded in Unicode as U+23F9, the black square for stop. Jason Kennedy of Auckland University of Technology notes in The Conversation that the square is graphically distinct from play: with four corners instead of three, it points in no direction. He cites the type designer Adrian Frutiger, who wrote in Signs and Symbols that a square suggests stability and closure.
Look-alikes
The two bars are pause, a temporary halt. A filled circle, U+23FA, is record.
Read next
- Next in Power and device symbolsEject symbolEject. A triangle pointing up above a bar ejects a disc, tape or other removable media.
- The same shape in African flagsFlag of SomaliaSomalia’s flag is light blue with a white five-pointed star in the centre. Somalia’s government says the star’s five points stand for the five regions in which Somalis live, divided under colonial rule; the Foreign Ministry reads the blue as life and the natural wealth of Somalia’s coast. Mohammed Awale Liban designed it, and it was adopted on 12 October 1954.
More power and device symbols
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols drawn with squares and rectangles.
Sources
- Miscellaneous Technical, Range: 2300–23FF (code chart), The Unicode Standard, Unicode Consortium, U+23F9, U+23FA
- Play, pause, rewind – where do these universal media symbols come from?, Jason Kennedy, Auckland University of Technology, 20 July 2026, The Conversation
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed September 26, 2026. How we research
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