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Skull Symbols

Tap a symbol to copy it. The skull and crossbones is a text character, the skull itself is an emoji, and the two behave differently on phones.

By Maya Chen, lettering designer and type educator · Checked by Jordan Hale · · How we review content

Skulls and bones

The two main skulls, then other death-themed marks from the same Unicode neighbourhood.

Hazard and warning signs

Often confused with the skull in gamer names, because they are drawn as black-and-yellow warning marks.

Daggers and crosses

Gothic accents that pair with a skull. These are plain text characters and do not turn into colour emoji.

Ready-made skull lines

Strings of several characters. Labels are plain descriptions, not Unicode names.

21 symbols on this page. Names are the official Unicode character names; "emoji" marks characters that often appear as colour pictures on phones.

Two skulls, two different kinds of character

Unicode has two main skulls and they are different kinds of thing. ☠ is SKULL AND CROSSBONES, code point U+2620, in the Miscellaneous Symbols block. It has been part of Unicode since its early days, and it was designed as a text symbol: a flat shape that sits on the line like a letter and takes the colour of the text around it. 💀 is SKULL, U+1F480, added later as an emoji. It is a colour picture, it ignores the text colour, and it has taken on a slang meaning of its own, roughly “I am dead from laughing”.

That difference decides which one you want. A gothic username, a metal band poster typed in a text box or a stark divider reads better with ☠. A joke reply or a reaction reads better with 💀. Using ☠ as a joke can backfire, because on some phones it gets the emoji treatment and looks cartoonish, while 💀 will never look severe.

Why ☠ looks different on different phones

U+2620 has what Unicode calls both a text and an emoji presentation. Which one you see depends on the app and the system fonts. iOS and Android commonly draw it as a coloured emoji, while desktop browsers and word processors usually draw a monochrome glyph. You can nudge the choice with a variation selector, an invisible character placed right after the symbol: U+FE0E requests text style and U+FE0F requests emoji style. Apps are free to ignore it, so treat it as a hint.

If you need the same appearance everywhere, you have two options. Choose characters that have no emoji form, such as † (DAGGER), ‡ or ✞, or accept that the skull will vary and design around it. The same logic applies to ☣ and ☢, which people often use as “toxic” or “danger” decorations.

Gamers mix skulls with warning signs because the visual mood is the same, but the meaning differs. ☣ (BIOHAZARD SIGN) and ☢ (RADIOACTIVE SIGN) are real safety symbols, and ⚠ (WARNING SIGN) is a general caution. Using them as decoration is fine in a nickname. In anything that has a safety function, such as a label or a notice, use the real regulated sign as an image, not a text character.

⚰ (COFFIN), ⚱ (FUNERAL URN) and 🦴 (BONE) are other death-themed emoji, and 👻 is a ghost. The daggers in the third group are older typographic marks. † is the dagger used for footnotes and, in obituary notation, for “deceased”. Seeing it next to a skull is therefore a bit of a visual pun, and it is why † appears so often in dark-themed names.

Where each skull works

Where ☠ 💀
Plain-text notes, email subject lines Usually fine Fine, but colour
Instagram and TikTok bios Generally accepted Accepted
Game nicknames Varies by game Often filtered
Printed labels and posters Needs a font that has it Needs a colour emoji font
Domain names and file names Avoid Avoid

The “game nicknames” row is a pattern we see, not a documented rule. Each game decides for itself, and we do not have a verified list. Our Free Fire name style and BGMI name style pages record what we can say about those two games.

How to type a skull

  1. Word on Windows. Type 2620 and press Alt then X. For ☣ type 2623, for ☢ type 2622, for † type 2020.
  2. Windows emoji panel. Press the Windows key and the period key, then search for skull.
  3. Mac. Press Control, Command and Space to open the Character Viewer, then search for skull.
  4. iPhone and Android. Open the emoji keyboard and search for skull. Only 💀 and ☠ appear there, and the daggers are on third-party symbol keyboards.
  5. Keep a shortcut. On iOS and macOS, a text replacement such as “skl” can expand to ☠.

There are no classic Alt codes for skulls, because the numeric Alt codes map to characters that older DOS and Windows code pages already had.

Accessibility

Screen readers read every character by its name, so “☠ NAME ☠” is announced as “skull and crossbones, name, skull and crossbones”. Repeated skulls get repeated announcements. Keep the decoration to one character, place it after the text, and do not use a skull instead of a word in anything the reader must understand. The fancy text accessibility guide covers how this works in more detail.

If you see a box

If ☠ displays as an empty rectangle, the device has no font containing it, which is rare today. See why fancy text shows boxes for the usual fixes. For other dark-themed shapes, the cross symbols and sword symbols pages go well with this one.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between ☠ and 💀?
☠ is SKULL AND CROSSBONES (U+2620), an old symbol character that most fonts draw as a flat black glyph. 💀 is SKULL (U+1F480), an emoji that always renders in colour and is also used to mean laughing to death. Pick ☠ for a stark look and 💀 for the playful one.
Why does ☠ sometimes show up as a coloured emoji?
Some phones, including iPhones, draw ☠ with an emoji font by default. You can request the flat form by following it with the invisible variation selector U+FE0E, but support varies by app. If you need a skull that is guaranteed to stay monochrome, use ☠ in a plain-text field or add †-style daggers instead.
Is there an Alt code for the skull and crossbones?
No. The classic Windows Alt codes come from the old DOS character set, which has card suits, arrows and a smiley but no skull. In Word you can type 2620 and press Alt then X. On other apps use the Windows emoji panel, the Mac Character Viewer or copy it from this page.
Will a skull symbol work in my Instagram or game name?
Often, but it depends on the field. Games and platforms filter symbols differently, and most do not publish a list. Try pasting it and check how the name displays after saving. Where an emoji is blocked, the flat ☠ is sometimes accepted, and a dagger † is an even safer fallback.
Are skull symbols read aloud by screen readers?
Yes. Screen readers announce ☠ as skull and crossbones and 💀 as skull, every time. A name decorated with a skull on each side gets two extra announcements, so use one at most and put it after the name rather than before it.

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