What are arrow symbols?
They're ordinary text characters that happen to point somewhere. Because they live in Unicode, the universal character list, you can paste them into a bio, a spreadsheet or a text message and they travel like any other letter. No images, no emoji picker, no fuss.
U+2192How to use left, right, up and down arrows
Direction does most of the talking. Pick the one that matches what you want the reader's eye to do.
Diagonals (↗ ↘ ↙ ↖) show trends and corners. Two-way arrows (↔ ↕) mean “both directions” or “swap”.
Where are arrow symbols used?
Anywhere you want a little direction without drawing anything. A few places you've probably seen them:
What are the common arrow symbols?
If you only remember a dozen, make it these. They're the safest too, since nearly every font draws them.
How to type arrow symbols
Copying from the grid is the fastest route. When you'd rather type one yourself, here's how.
Hold Alt, type the number on the numeric keypad, then let go. Prefer the emoji panel? Press Win + . and open the symbols tab.
That opens the Emoji & Symbols viewer. Search “arrow”, double-click the one you want.
Type the characters followed by a space and autocorrect swaps them. In Word you can also type 2192 and press Alt + X.
In HTML, use either entity. On a phone, copy from the grid above, or look in your keyboard's symbols or emoji section.