Last Track Button Emoji

The last track button (⏮️) is a media control emoji showing two left-pointing triangles with a vertical bar — the universal "skip to previous" symbol. In texting and social media, it's evolved way beyond its literal function. People use it to say "take me back," "replay that," or "rewind to the good part." It's the nostalgia emoji, the "that song deserves another listen" emoji, and sometimes the "I wish I could undo what just happened" emoji. The symbol itself dates back to Ampex reel-to-reel tape recorders in the 1960s, where the double-triangle icons were invented to solve a specific problem: tape deck buttons needed to work internationally without translation. A triangle pointing in the tape's direction of movement became play (▶), two triangles became fast-forward (⏩), and the reverse versions became rewind (⏪) and skip-back (⏮️). Sony's Betamax VCR in 1975 was the first home device to put the full set of transport controls on a consumer product. Now those 60-year-old symbols live on your phone.

Music Twitter/X is where ⏮️ really shines. When someone drops an album, the ⏮️ reply means "this track needs a second listen." Spotify Wrapped season (December) triggers a flood of ⏮️ usage as people share their most-replayed songs. TikTok creators use it as a visual shorthand for "rewatch this" or "wait, go back." The emoji also shows up in nostalgia posts — throwback photos with ⏮️ captions signal "take me back to this moment." In a world where 24.6% of all Spotify streams get skipped in the first 5 seconds, ⏮️ is a statement: this one's worth going back to.

Media control symbols were born out of necessity, not design awards. In the 1960s, Ampex engineers working on professional reel-to-reel tape recorders needed icons that would work across languages — tape decks were being sold internationally, and "pause" doesn't translate neatly into every language. The pause symbol (⏸️) drew from the caesura, a musical notation for a break in rhythm. The play triangle (▶) pointed in the direction the tape physically moved. Double that triangle for speed (⏩ fast-forward, ⏪ rewind). Add a vertical bar to mean "skip to boundary" (⏭️ next track, ⏮️ previous track). Sony's Betamax VCR in 1975 brought the full set to home electronics, and Philips cassette decks cemented them as universal. The IEC formalized them in standard 60417, first published in 1973. These symbols survived the transition from tape to CD to MP3 to streaming — 60+ years without a redesign. The Unicode Consortium encoded them at U+23EE (BLACK LEFT-POINTING DOUBLE TRIANGLE WITH VERTICAL BAR) in Unicode 6.0 (2010), and they joined Emoji 1.0 in 2015.

Encoded in Unicode 6.0 (2010) as U+23EE BLACK LEFT-POINTING DOUBLE TRIANGLE WITH VERTICAL BAR. Added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. Part of the Miscellaneous Technical block (U+2300–U+23FF), alongside other media control symbols like ⏭️, ⏸️, ⏹️, and ⏺️.

The media control symbols are one of the most universal visual languages on Earth — a play button means the same thing in Tokyo, Lagos, and São Paulo. That universality is exactly why Ampex invented them in the 1960s. But the metaphorical use of ⏮️ varies: in Western social media it's heavy on nostalgia ("take me back"), while in K-pop fan communities it specifically means "stream this song again" — a functional call to action to boost play counts. Japanese music culture tends to use text-based indicators (もう一回 / "one more time") rather than emoji for replay requests.

• •The media control symbols (▶ ⏸ ⏹ ⏪ ⏩) were invented at Ampex in the 1960s because "pause" was hard to translate into every language. Geometric shapes needed no translation.
• •Sony's Betamax VCR (1975) was the first home device to put the complete set of play/pause/stop/rewind/fast-forward buttons on a consumer product.
• •The IEC standardized these symbols in IEC 60417, first published in 1973. They haven't been redesigned since — making them some of the longest-lived interface icons in history.
• •A quarter of all Spotify songs get skipped within 5 seconds. The average listener skips 14.65 times per hour — about once every 4 minutes.
• •Cassette tape sales are up 440% over the past decade. U.S. cassette sales doubled in Q1 2025 alone. Gen Z is driving the revival despite never experiencing the original format.

• •Using ⏮️ when you mean ⏪ — ⏮️ means "skip to start of previous track" while ⏪ means "rewind within the current track." Most people don't know the difference.
• •Sending ⏮️ in a professional context — it reads as casual/musical and can confuse colleagues who expect straightforward language.
• •Assuming it means "undo" — ⏮️ is about replaying or revisiting, not erasing or reversing a decision.

• •"Be Kind Rewind" (2008): Michel Gondry's comedy about two guys who accidentally erase every VHS tape in a rental store and recreate the films from memory. The title comes from the sticker that lived inside every Blockbuster case.
• •Spotify Wrapped: Every December, Wrapped generates 2.1 million social media mentions in 48 hours and 400 million TikTok views in 3 days. The ⏮️ emoji spikes in usage as people share their most-replayed tracks.
• •Netflix Skip Intro (2017): Netflix added the "Skip Intro" button after discovering 15% of viewers were manually fast-forwarding through openings. It now gets pressed 136 million times daily.
• •Vinyl revival: 46 million vinyl records sold in the US in 2024. Artists like Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, and Drake release exclusive vinyl editions. The physical "rewind" format is outselling many digital metrics in search interest.

• •U+23EE is in the Miscellaneous Technical block, not the Arrows block. If you're building an emoji picker that groups by Unicode block, media controls and arrows will be in different sections.
• •The variation selector (U+FE0F) matters: without it, many systems render ⏮ as a monochrome text symbol instead of the colored emoji version.
• •HTML entity: ⏮️⏮️. In CSS: content: '\23EE\FE0F'content: '\23EE\FE0F'. Some older browsers may not render the colored version.
• •Accessibility: screen readers announce this as "last track button" — if you're using it metaphorically ("rewind"), add an aria-label for clarity.

See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.