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.
More power and device symbols
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
Last reviewed September 26, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research