Snowflake Symbols

The three snowflakes

Unicode has three characters named as snowflakes, all in the Dingbats block, an old set of ornaments taken from the Zapf Dingbats symbol font. ❄ is SNOWFLAKE (U+2744). ❅ is TIGHT TRIFOLIATE SNOWFLAKE (U+2745). ❆ is HEAVY CHEVRON SNOWFLAKE (U+2746). In most fonts, ❄ looks like a six-armed flake with side branches, ❅ looks rounder and denser, and ❆ looks bolder with chevron-shaped arms. The names describe the original designs, but each font reinterprets them, so the distinction can be subtle.

The reason there are three is historical. The Dingbats set came with a whole family of ornaments, such as asterisks, stars and florets, each in several weights, and snowflakes were part of that. They were never meant as a themed emoji set. That is why the shape and weight options feel like type ornaments, which they are.

Why only ❄ turns into an emoji

Only ❄ appears in the emoji set, and phones often draw it as a pale blue flake with a different design. ❅ and ❆ are not emoji, so every device renders them as ordinary text characters in the current text colour. If you want a flake that looks identical everywhere, pick ❅ or ❆. If you want colour, use ❄ and expect it to vary by platform. The invisible selectors U+FE0E and U+FE0F can ask for text or emoji style on ❄, but support differs between apps.

Likewise ☃ (SNOWMAN) and ⛄ (SNOWMAN WITHOUT SNOW) look very different. ☃ is a snowman with snow and is a text character that can appear as an emoji. ⛄ is a snowman without snow, and it is nearly always drawn as an emoji.

Snow from asterisks

You can build a snowfall with characters that were not named as snowflakes. Dingbats has a set of spoked asterisks: ✻ (TEARDROP-SPOKED ASTERISK), ✼ (OPEN CENTRE TEARDROP-SPOKED ASTERISK), ❉ (BALLOON-SPOKED ASTERISK) and ❊, plus ✳ (EIGHT SPOKED ASTERISK). Each has radial symmetry, so repeated across a line they look like flakes falling. ⁎ (LOW ASTERISK) is the smallest and works well for tiny dots of snow between larger flakes.

A sensible pattern is to mix two or three shapes, for example ❄ ✻ ⁎ ❅, and vary the spacing. Using a single repeated character produces a mechanical look. A longer random string looks more like real snowfall, but keep it short for a bio, because every character counts against the limit and is read aloud by screen readers.

Seasonal use and tone

Snowflakes are mostly used in three ways: in names and bios during winter, as decoration for holiday greetings, and as part of an icy or cool aesthetic that is not tied to a season. For the third, ❄ with a pale blue emoji is the most obvious choice, and the star-like ✧ and ⋆ marks, covered on the sparkle symbols page, give a glittery frost look.

If you are writing a message that will be read by a wide audience, keep in mind that a snowflake can read as an emoji with a particular tone in some apps. In a few Western contexts, “snowflake” is also a slang insult. A single ❄ in a winter greeting is unlikely to be misread, but the same symbol in a username used in a political thread could be. Context decides.

Cold-themed extras

The third group collects winter emoji, such as 🧊 (ICE CUBE), ⛷ (SKIER) and 🏂 (SNOWBOARDER). They are colour pictures and always ignore text colour. ☁ (CLOUD) is a text character that can also appear as an emoji, and it pairs well with flakes.

How to type a snowflake

1. Word. Type 2744 and press Alt then X for ❄. Use 2745 for ❅ and 2746 for ❆.
2. Windows emoji panel. Press the Windows key and the period key, then search snow.
3. Mac. Search snowflake in the Character Viewer (Control, Command and Space).
4. iPhone and Android. Search the emoji keyboard for snowflake, which gives ❄ only. For ❅ and ❆, copy from this page or use a symbols keyboard.
5. Linux. In GTK apps press Control, Shift and U, then type 2744 and Enter.

There are no classic Windows Alt codes for any snowflake, because the old character sets pre-date them.

Accessibility

Screen readers announce ❄ as “snowflake”, ❅ as “tight trifoliate snowflake” and ❆ as “heavy chevron snowflake”. Those long names are tiring when repeated, so keep snow decorations short. An emoji snowflake uses the simple name “snowflake”. Never replace a word such as “winter” with a symbol in text that someone needs to understand. The fancy text accessibility guide goes into this in more detail.

Fonts and boxes

Most modern systems have all three snowflakes, but a few fonts, particularly narrow display fonts, lack ❅ and ❆. If you see a box, check the boxes guide. For the matching warm marks, see the sun symbols, and for floral frost patterns see flower symbols.