HTML for the Pause symbol in audio and video control
I'm trying to find the Unicode symbol to make a button display the Unicode pause symbol. I was able to find that the Unicode play symbol is ► but I'm looking for the equivalent of the Unicode pause symbol.
Answer
Unicode Standard for Media Control Symbols
Pause: ⏸︎
The Unicode Standard 13.0 (update 2020) provides the Miscellaneous Technical glyphs in the HEX range 2300–23FF
Miscellaneous Technical
Given the extensive Unicode 13.0 documentation, some of the glyphs we can associate to common Media control symbols would be as following:
Keyboard and UI symbols
23CF ⏏︎ Eject media
User interface symbols
23E9 ⏩︎ fast forward
23EA ⏪︎ rewind, fast backwards
23EB ⏫︎ fast increase
23EC ⏬︎ fast decrease
23ED ⏭︎ skip to end, next
23EE ⏮︎ skip to start, previous
23EF ⏯︎ play/pause toggle
23F1 ⏱︎ stopwatch
23F2 ⏲︎ timer clock
23F3 ⏳︎ hourglass
23F4 ⏴︎ reverse, back
23F5 ⏵︎ forward, next, play
23F6 ⏶︎ increase
23F7 ⏷︎ decrease
23F8 ⏸︎ pause
23F9 ⏹︎ stop
23FA ⏺︎ recordPower symbols from ISO 7000:2012
23FB ⏻︎ standby/power
23FC ⏼︎ power on/off
23FD ⏽︎ power on
2B58 ⭘︎ power offPower symbol from IEEE 1621-2004
23FE ⏾︎ power sleep
Use on the Web:
A file must be saved using UTF-8 encoding without BOM (which in most development environments is set by default) in order to instruct the parser how to transform the bytes into characters correctly. <meta charset="utf-8"/> should be used immediately after <head> in a HTML file, and make sure the correct HTTP headers Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 are set.
Examples:
HTML⏩ Pictograph
⏩︎ Standardized Variant
.icon-ff:before { content: "\23E9" }
.icon-ff--standard:before { content: "\23E9\FE0E" }
EL_iconFF.textContent = "\u23E9";
EL_iconFF_standard.textContent = "\u23E9\uFE0E"
Standardized variant
To prevent a glyph from being "color-emojified" ⏩︎ / ⏩ append the code U+FE0E Text Presentation Selector to request a Standardized variant: (example: ⏩︎)
Inconsistencies
Characters in the Unicode range are susceptible to the font-family environment they are used, application, browser, OS, platform.
When unknown or missing - we might see symbols like � or ▯ instead, or even inconsistent behavior due to differences in HTML parser implementations by different vendors.
For example, on Windows Chromium browsers the Standardized Variant suffix U+FE0E is buggy, and such symbols are still better accompanied by CSS i.e: font-family: "Segoe UI Symbol" to force that specific Font over the Colored Emoji (usually recognized as "Segoe UI Emoji") - which defies the purpose of U+FE0E in the first place - time will tell…
Scalable icon fonts
To circumvent problems related to unsupported characters - a viable solution is to use scalable icon font-sets like i.e:
Font Awesome
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/font-awesome/4.3.0/css/font-awesome.min.css">
<i class="fa fa-arrows-alt"></i>
<i class="fa fa-backward"></i>
<i class="fa fa-compress"></i>
<i class="fa fa-eject"></i>
<i class="fa fa-expand"></i>
<i class="fa fa-fast-backward"></i>
<i class="fa fa-fast-forward"></i>
<i class="fa fa-forward"></i>
<i class="fa fa-pause"></i>
<i class="fa fa-play"></i>
<i class="fa fa-play-circle"></i>
<i class="fa fa-play-circle-o"></i>
<i class="fa fa-step-backward"></i>
<i class="fa fa-step-forward"></i>
<i class="fa fa-stop"></i>
<i class="fa fa-youtube-play"></i>Google Icons
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/icon?family=Material+Icons" rel="stylesheet">
<i class="material-icons">pause</i>
<i class="material-icons">pause_circle_filled</i>
<i class="material-icons">pause_circle_outline</i>
<i class="material-icons">fast_forward</i>
<i class="material-icons">fast_rewind</i>
<i class="material-icons">fiber_manual_record</i>
<i class="material-icons">play_arrow</i>
<i class="material-icons">play_circle_filled</i>
<i class="material-icons">play_circle_outline</i>
<i class="material-icons">skip_next</i>
<i class="material-icons">skip_previous</i>
<i class="material-icons">replay</i>
<i class="material-icons">repeat</i>
<i class="material-icons">stop</i>
<i class="material-icons">loop</i>
<i class="material-icons">mic</i>
<i class="material-icons">volume_up</i>
<i class="material-icons">volume_down</i>
<i class="material-icons">volume_mute</i>
<i class="material-icons">volume_off</i>and many other you can find in the wild; and last but not least, this really useful online tool: font-icons generator, Icomoon.io.