Sparkle Symbols

Sparkle versus star

Searchers tend to separate the two, but Unicode does not. The glint shape ✦ is named BLACK FOUR POINTED STAR and its outline twin ✧ is WHITE FOUR POINTED STAR. What makes a four-point star a sparkle is context: it is thin, it is small, and it sits beside text or other marks as a flash of light. A five-point star ★ reads as a rating or an award. The distinction is a matter of reading, not of encoding, which is why the star symbols page and this one overlap. Use that page for stars as stars. This one is for shine.

The families

Four-point glints. ✦ and ✧ are from the Dingbats block. ⋆ (STAR OPERATOR) is a small five-point maths operator that looks like a tiny star; because it is small, it often serves as the small sparkle next to a larger one. ⊹ (HERMITIAN CONJUGATE MATRIX) and ⟡ (WHITE CONCAVE-SIDED DIAMOND) are maths symbols borrowed for the same job: ⟡ has curved concave sides that look like a four-point star. ❇ (SPARKLE) and ❈ (HEAVY SPARKLE) are Dingbat ornaments with eight rays around a centre.

Bursts. ✴ (EIGHT POINTED BLACK STAR), ✳ (EIGHT SPOKED ASTERISK), ✺ (SIXTEEN POINTED ASTERISK) and ✲ (OPEN CENTRE ASTERISK) are busier, and they hold up at small sizes where a four-point star is thin. ❉ and ❊ are balloon-spoked and propeller asterisks; at a glance they read like fireworks. ⁂ (ASTERISM) is three asterisks in a triangle, an old typographic section marker, and ⚝ (OUTLINED WHITE STAR) is a clean outline star.

The emoji. ✨ (SPARKLES) is the one most people mean in chat. 💫 (DIZZY SYMBOL) and 🌟 (GLOWING STAR) are emoji of a different kind: they show a star with motion lines or a halo. ☄ (COMET) is a text character that most phones draw as an emoji. All of these are drawn by the platform and look different on each device.

Text and emoji presentation

Some sparkle characters exist in both forms. ❇ (U+2747), ✳ (U+2733) and ✴ (U+2734) are text by default but have emoji variants, and phones often show those, in green for ❇ and ✳ and orange for ✴. ✨ is emoji only. ✦ ✧ ⋆ ⊹ ⟡ and ✺ have no emoji form and stay in your text colour everywhere that has the glyph.

Two invisible selectors let you ask for a form. U+FE0E requests text and U+FE0F requests emoji. They are requests, and apps may ignore them or show a stray box. If you need a sparkle that keeps the colour of your text, pick ✦ or ✧ and skip the selector.

Sparkles in names and captions

A sparkle works best as punctuation, not as the subject. One at each end of a short phrase, or a pair of different sizes next to each other (a ✦ and a smaller ⋆), reads as polished. A long row reads as noise, and a screen reader will announce every one of them.

The trails in the last group are strings, not single characters, so their labels are plain descriptions. The first uses halfwidth characters from the Japanese compatibility block, which are narrower than normal punctuation and give the tidy spaced look. They are widely supported on modern systems but may be drawn with a different width in a few fonts, which makes the trail look uneven.

The aesthetic symbols page has more of the dots and wings that go around a sparkle, and the text decorator can add several automatically around a name.

How to type sparkles

1. Word on Windows. Type the code point and press Alt then X: 2726 for ✦, 2727 for ✧, 22C6 for ⋆, 2747 for ❇.
2. Windows emoji panel. Press the Windows key and the period key, then search sparkles for ✨.
3. Mac. Search sparkle or four pointed in the Character Viewer, which opens with Control, Command and Space.
4. iPhone and Android. The emoji keyboard has ✨ 💫 🌟. For plain ✦ and ✧, copy from this page or add a text replacement such as “glint” that expands to ✦.
5. HTML. ✦ gives ✦ and ✧ gives ✧.

There are no legacy Alt codes for any sparkle.

Accessibility

Screen readers say the character name: “black four pointed star” for ✦, “sparkles” for ✨. Wording varies between NVDA, JAWS, VoiceOver and TalkBack. A sparkle on each side of a name adds two announcements before and after, and a trail adds one per character. Keep decorative sparkles to a pair at most, and never use one where a word is needed. The fancy text accessibility guide covers symbols and styled text together.

Missing glyphs

✦ and ✧ are in most system fonts. Maths-block characters such as ⟡ and ⊹ are less common, and older systems may show a box for them. If you see boxes, choose ✦ or ✧, and read the boxes guide for what causes the substitution.