Mirror Emoji

An oval mirror with an ornate gold or silver frame, the kind you'd find on a vanity table or mounted on a wall. The Unicode proposal listed four expected use cases: getting ready (a gender-neutral cosmetic symbol), reflection ("bouncing communication back"), mirror selfies, and vanity. All four turned out to be exactly right.

In practice, 🪞 is pulled in two directions. There's the literal, surface-level use: getting ready, checking your look, mirror selfies, beauty routines. And then there's the philosophical weight the mirror has carried for thousands of years: self-reflection, truth, vanity, identity. When someone captions a selfie with 🪞✨ they're in the first camp. When someone posts "🪞 take a good look at yourself" after a public argument, they're in the second. The emoji inherits both meanings equally because that's what mirrors do: they're simultaneously the most shallow and the most profound object in your home.

The broken mirror superstition adds a third layer. Send 🪞💔 and you're invoking seven years of bad luck, a belief that started with the ancient Romans who thought your reflection was your soul, and that it took seven years for the body to fully renew itself.

🪞 shows up constantly in beauty and fashion content. On Instagram, it's the go-to emoji for mirror selfie captions, GRWM (get ready with me) posts, and outfit-of-the-day photos. It pairs naturally with 💄, 💅, and ✨ in the beauty aesthetic.

On TikTok, the "mirror selfie" trend has driven consistent use, with the hashtag #mirrorselfie racking up billions of views across 2022-2025. Gen Z revived the trend after it had been dismissed as basic, reframing mirror selfies as intentional and aesthetic rather than lazy. The 🪞 emoji became the caption shorthand for this whole vibe.

There's also a more introspective lane. Therapy TikTok and self-improvement accounts use 🪞 to represent inner work, self-awareness, and confronting uncomfortable truths. "The mirror doesn't lie 🪞" is a recurring caption format in mental health content. On Twitter/X, it's used in call-out contexts: reflecting someone's behavior back at them.

The Unicode proposal for 🪞 (L2/19-098) was submitted in 2019 and made a strong case that mirrors were completely absent from the emoji standard despite being one of the most culturally loaded objects in human history. The proposal emphasized the mirror as a "gender-neutral cosmetic symbol" — a deliberate alternative to the 💄 and 💅 emojis that had long been gendered female by association.

The proposal also referenced the concept of "bouncing communication back" as an expected use case, predicting that people would use 🪞 to mean "reflect on what you just said." That prediction was spot-on.

There was a companion proposal (L2/19-099) for a "Person Looking in Mirror" emoji with skin tone variants, but that one didn't make the cut. Just the mirror itself was approved as part of Unicode 13.0 and Emoji 13.0 in March 2020. Apple shipped it in iOS 14.2 (November 2020), Google in Android 11.

1. 2019Unicode proposal L2/19-098 submitted for MIRROR emoji↗
2. 2020Approved in Unicode 13.0 and Emoji 13.0 (March 2020)↗
3. 2020Apple ships 🪞 in iOS 14.2 (November 2020)↗
4. 2020Google includes 🪞 in Android 11↗
5. 2022Apple updates 🪞 design in iOS 15.4 with more detailed frame↗

Mirrors carry wildly different symbolic weight depending on where you are.

In Japan, the mirror is sacred. The Yata no Kagami is one of three Imperial Regalia items, alongside the sword and jewel. It represents wisdom and honesty — the idea that a mirror can only show truth. It's housed at the Ise Grand Shrine and is so sacred that even the emperor reportedly hasn't seen it. In Shinto, mirrors are placed in shrines because they're believed to house divine spirits.

In China, mirrors have been both protectors and weapons. Bronze mirrors were used as talismans to ward off evil spirits in ancient Chinese culture. In feng shui, mirror placement is taken seriously: a mirror facing the bed is believed to steal your soul while you sleep, while a mirror reflecting the dining table doubles your wealth.

In Western tradition, the broken mirror superstition dominates. The ancient Romans believed your reflection was your soul, and that the body renewed every seven years — so breaking a mirror meant seven years with a damaged soul. In Russia, a broken mirror is said to release evil spirits who then haunt the person responsible.

• •The actual Disney line is "Magic mirror on the wall", not "Mirror, mirror on the wall." Most people get it wrong — it's one of the most widely cited Mandela Effects.
• •Only 9 species pass the mirror self-recognition test: great apes, bottlenose dolphins, orcas, elephants, European magpies, cleaner wrasse, manta rays, horses, and some ants. Cats and dogs fail it.
• •The Yata no Kagami, Japan's sacred mirror, is one of three Imperial Regalia items alongside a sword and a jewel. It represents wisdom and is so protected that even the emperor hasn't seen the original.
• •Jacques Lacan's "mirror stage" theory (1949) describes the moment between 6-18 months when an infant first recognizes their reflection — the birth of the human ego.
• •In Chinese feng shui, a mirror facing your bed is believed to steal your soul while you sleep, while a mirror reflecting your dining table doubles your wealth. Same object, opposite outcomes depending on placement.
• •Charlie Brooker named "Black Mirror" after the dark, reflective screen of a powered-off device. "The cold, shiny screen of a TV, a monitor, a smartphone" is the black mirror we all carry.

• •Sending 🪞 to someone after they say something hypocritical can be read as "take a look at yourself" — which is often the intent. But the same emoji in a beauty context is purely positive. The gap between "you look great 🪞✨" and "maybe look in the mirror 🪞" is enormous, and tone is the only difference.
• •Using 🪞💔 can be read as either "broken mirror bad luck" (superstition) or "my self-image is shattered" (emotional). If someone's going through a rough time and you send this combo, they might read the darker interpretation.

• •Snow White (1937) — Disney's Evil Queen consults a magic mirror to ask who's the fairest of them all. The actual line is "Magic mirror on the wall," not "Mirror, mirror" — one of the most famous Mandela Effects. The original Brothers Grimm version (1812) does use "Spieglein, Spieglein."
• •Black Mirror (2011-present) — Charlie Brooker's anthology series is named after the dark, reflective screen of a powered-off device. As Brooker explained: "The 'black mirror' of the title is the one you'll find on every wall, on every desk, in the palm of every hand: the cold, shiny screen."
• •Perseus and Medusa (Greek mythology) — Perseus used his shield as a mirror to avoid Medusa's direct gaze and behead her. The mirror as weapon against evil is one of the oldest tropes in Western mythology.
• •Narcissus (Greek mythology) — The origin of the word "narcissism." Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection in a pool of water and wasted away staring at it. Every mirror selfie is, technically, a miniature act of Narcissus.
• •The Mirror of Erised (Harry Potter) — J.K. Rowling's enchanted mirror shows "the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts." The name is "desire" spelled backward. Dumbledore claims to see himself holding socks.
• •Taylor Swift's "Mirrorball" (2020) — The lead-off track from folklore. Swift sings "I'm a mirrorball / I'll show you every version of yourself tonight," connecting the mirror to performative identity and people-pleasing.

• •U+1FA9EU+1FA9E. Part of Unicode 13.0 (2020), Emoji 13.0. No variation selector needed.
• •Shortcode: :mirror::mirror: on Slack and Discord. GitHub also supports :mirror::mirror:.
• •Don't confuse with 🪩 Mirror Ball (U+1FAA9U+1FAA9), which was added a year later in Unicode 14.0. They're different codepoints with different meanings.

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