Unicode Symbol Picker
Browse and copy Unicode symbols that work in Minecraft chat, signs, books, and MOTDs. Click any symbol to copy it.
Arrows
Stars & Decorative
Hearts & Shapes
Math & Operators
Box Drawing
Misc Symbols
Currency
How to copy a symbol into Minecraft
Find the symbol
Search by name or paste the character itself, or narrow the grid with the arrows, stars, hearts, maths, box drawing, misc and currency tabs.
Click to copy
One click puts the bare character on the clipboard, with no code and no escape wrapped around it.
Paste where it renders
A MOTD takes every symbol on this page. Signs, books and chat depend on the glyph sheets the client has loaded.
Escape it for a file
server.properties is read as Latin-1, so a symbol outside that range has to be written as a backslash u escape.
How It Works
Browse and copy Unicode symbols that work in Minecraft.
Java Edition 26.2Checked on against 104 symbols against the three font sheetsPage updated
Using Unicode in Minecraft
Minecraft Java Edition supports a subset of Unicode characters in chat, signs, written books, and server MOTD messages. Not every symbol renders correctly because the game uses a bitmap font that only includes certain code points. If a symbol shows as a box or blank, the font does not include a glyph for it.
Server MOTDs (in server.properties or via a MOTD plugin) support all symbols listed here. For signs and books, most symbols in the Basic Multilingual Plane work. Chat messages depend on the server and client version. Resource packs with custom fonts can extend the character set to include any Unicode symbol. Since MOTDs take every symbol on this page, the MOTD generator drops them straight into the two lines with the color codes already around them. Books keep the same symbols per page, which the book generator writes out, and in a command they travel as plain text inside the components the JSON text generator builds.
Tips for Server Owners
Use decorative symbols in permission group prefixes (via LuckPerms), scoreboard display names, tab list headers, and NPC dialogue. Symbols like stars, hearts, and arrows add visual polish without needing custom resource packs. Copy symbols from this page and paste them directly into your plugin configs.
Which symbols Minecraft can draw
| The font | Minecraft draws text from its own glyph sheets. A character outside those sheets is drawn as a hollow box, no matter how well your operating system knows it. |
|---|---|
| Where they work | Chat, signs, books, item and entity names, team prefixes and the server list all read the same font. |
| server.properties | That file is read as Latin-1. A symbol outside Latin-1 has to be written as a backslash u escape or it arrives mangled. |
| Typing them | There is no way to type most of these in game. They are pasted in, which is why a picker is the practical route. |
| Bedrock | A different font with a different coverage. A symbol that draws on Java can still be a box on Bedrock. |
| Length | Each symbol counts as one character against limits such as the 256 character chat cap, however wide it looks. |
All 104 symbols were held against the three bitmap font sheets in the 26.2 client jar on 8 August 2026: 76 sit on ascii, accented or nonlatin_european and are drawn in the normal font, while the other 28 have to come from the fallback font and appear in a different shape.
What these 104 symbols weigh once they leave the clipboard
One symbol is one character on screen and almost never one byte. Every symbol in this picker was measured as UTF-8 and as a Latin-1 escape, because those are the two forms a server actually stores.
UTF-8: 2 bytes from U+0080 to U+07FF, 3 bytes from U+0800 to U+FFFFserver.properties: one backslash u escape, always 6 ASCII charactersa symbol above U+FFFF would need two escapes, because Java counts it as two charactersThat last line is the one that saves an evening. Nothing here is an emoji, and emoji are the characters that sit above U+FFFF: they eat two of your escape slots, count as two characters against a limit, and the game font has no glyph for them anyway.
Frequently Asked Questions
Questions about symbols
Why do I see an empty box instead of the symbol?
The game font has no glyph for that character. The box is the placeholder for a missing glyph, and no resource pack short of one that adds the glyph will change it.
Can I use symbols in my server name in server.properties?
Yes, but write them as escapes. The file is read as Latin-1, so anything past that range survives only in the backslash u form.
Do symbols work on signs and in item names?
Yes, both use the same font as chat. Item names are the most common use, since a symbol there reads as decoration rather than as text a player has to retype.
Will Bedrock players see the same thing?
Not necessarily. Bedrock ships its own font, so a symbol can be drawn on one edition and be a box on the other. Test anything you put in a cross platform MOTD on both.
Embed This Tool
Put the unicode symbol picker on your own site or server wiki.
<iframe src="https://tools.astroworldmc.com/embed/unicode-symbol-picker" width="700" height="600" frameborder="0" style="border:none;border-radius:12px;" loading="lazy" title="Unicode Symbol Picker"></iframe>
