Muted Speaker Emoji

A speaker icon with a line slashing through it. Universal shorthand for "no sound." You'd think that's straightforward, but 🔇 picked up a second life during the pandemic as the emoji of Zoom awkwardness, muted group chats, and the growing cultural desire to just... be quiet for a minute.

The Unicode name is SPEAKER WITH CANCELLATION STROKE, which sounds like a medical procedure. Everyone calls it the mute emoji. It was approved in Unicode 6.0 (2010) and added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015, part of a four-emoji volume slider: 🔇 (muted), 🔈 (low), 🔉 (medium), 🔊 (high). Together they form a visual gradient from silence to noise.

In texting, it means one of several things: "I'm going silent," "please stop talking," "I've muted this conversation," or the more passive-aggressive "I'm choosing not to hear you." That last one is where it gets interesting. Muting someone's notifications, muting a group chat, ghosting by simply going quiet, these are all acts of digital silence that 🔇 can represent.

In 2020, 🔇 had its moment. Zoom went from 10 million daily users in December 2019 to over 300 million by April 2020. "You're on mute" became so ubiquitous that the American Dialect Society selected it as their Zoom-related Word of the Year, and it appeared 429 times in corporate earnings call transcripts in Q2 2020 alone. The 🔇 emoji rode that wave, becoming the go-to symbol for Zoom fails, muted microphones, and the particular embarrassment of talking passionately for two minutes while your mic is off.

Beyond video calls, 🔇 shows up in three main contexts. First, the literal: sharing your phone's silent mode status before a movie, meeting, or exam. Second, the social boundary: "Muted the group chat 🔇" has become a common WhatsApp/iMessage flex. A Pew Research study found 68% of frequent WhatsApp users feel overwhelmed by group notifications at least once a week, making muting an act of self-care rather than rudeness. Third, the metaphorical: "I'm 🔇 this week" meaning you're stepping back, going quiet, taking a break from social noise.

There's also a petty usage that's more common than you'd think. Sending 🔇 in response to someone's hot take or rant is the emoji equivalent of putting them on mute. It says: "I heard you, I'm choosing not to engage."

The muted speaker symbol predates digital devices. The "no" circle with a diagonal line, called the prohibition sign or "No" symbol, was standardized by ISO in the 1970s for international safety signs. Apply it to a speaker icon and you get the universal "sound off" indicator that appeared on everything from car stereos to TV remotes.

When Unicode included it in 2010, the original name was SPEAKER WITH CANCELLATION STROKESPEAKER WITH CANCELLATION STROKE, using the formal term for the diagonal line. It was part of a planned set of audio control emojis that mirrored the volume controls on every operating system's taskbar. The fact that it came with three siblings (🔈 🔉 🔊) made it unusual, since most emoji concepts get one codepoint, not a four-step gradient.

But the emoji's real cultural moment came from hardware, not software. When Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone in 2007, it had a physical mute switch on the side. For 16 years, that little toggle was how hundreds of millions of people silenced their phones. You could feel whether it was on or off without looking. In September 2023, Apple killed the mute switch on the iPhone 15 Pro, replacing it with a programmable Action Button. By iPhone 16, the switch was gone across the entire lineup. The Fast Company review called it "killing the mute button and leaving us with this mess." What users lost was tactile certainty. You used to reach into your pocket and know, by feel, that your phone was silenced. Now you have to trust a long-press and haptic feedback.

Approved in Unicode 6.0 (2010) under the name SPEAKER WITH CANCELLATION STROKESPEAKER WITH CANCELLATION STROKE. Added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. The red diagonal line across the speaker follows a universal ISO prohibition sign convention, the same slash you see on no-smoking signs, no-entry signs, and crossed-out phone symbols. It's part of a four-emoji volume set: 🔇 (muted), 🔈 (low volume), 🔉 (medium volume), 🔊 (high volume).

1. 1971ISO publishes the prohibition sign standard, the red circle with diagonal line used for safety symbols worldwide↗
2. 2007Steve Jobs unveils the iPhone with a physical mute switch, giving 'silent mode' a tactile form factor
3. 2010Unicode 6.0 standardizes U+1F507 SPEAKER WITH CANCELLATION STROKE as part of a four-emoji volume set↗
4. 2015Added to Emoji 1.0, becoming available on all major platforms
5. 2020"You're on mute" becomes the American Dialect Society's Zoom Word of the Year. The mute emoji becomes a pandemic icon↗
6. 2023Apple kills the iPhone mute switch on iPhone 15 Pro, replacing it with the Action Button. Accessibility advocates raise concerns↗
7. 2024iPhone 16 removes the mute switch across all models. The physical mute toggle is officially dead after 17 years↗

• •The American Dialect Society created a special Zoom Word of the Year category in 2020 just to recognize "you're muted," which won with 65% of the vote.
• •"You're on mute" appeared 429 times in corporate earnings call transcripts in Q2 2020, up from fewer than 100 per quarter before the pandemic.
• •Zoom's daily users jumped from 10 million in December 2019 to over 300 million by April 2020, a 30x increase in four months.
• •Apple's iPhone mute switch lasted 17 years (2007-2024) before being replaced by the Action Button. Accessibility advocates protested that blind users could no longer confirm silent mode by touch.
• •The Unicode name for 🔇 is SPEAKER WITH CANCELLATION STROKESPEAKER WITH CANCELLATION STROKE, using the formal term for the diagonal slash line.
• •TikTok's "silent walking" trend went viral in 2023, encouraging people to walk without headphones. The idea of intentional silence as a health practice has ancient roots in Buddhist walking meditation.
• •Google Trends data shows "do not disturb mode" searches nearly doubled from 2019 to 2026, reflecting a growing cultural demand for digital silence.

• •Sending 🔇 alone in response to someone's message can read as "I'm ignoring you" or "shut up" rather than "my phone is on silent." Add context to avoid sounding passive-aggressive.
• •Some people confuse 🔇 with 🔕 (bell with slash). The difference: 🔇 mutes all sound, 🔕 mutes notifications specifically. If you're telling someone you won't see their texts, 🔕 is more precise.
• •In some professional contexts, 🔇 can be interpreted as "I'm checked out" rather than "I'm focusing." Pair it with a timeframe: "Heads down until 3pm 🔇" reads better than just "🔇".

• •"You're on mute" (2020) — The defining phrase of the pandemic year. Marker magazine documented how it went from a Zoom reminder to a cultural phenomenon, spawning merch, memes, and an American Dialect Society award. The 🔇 emoji became shorthand for the entire experience of pandemic remote work.
• •TikTok's silent walking movement (2023) — Creator Mady Maio's suggestion to walk without headphones turned into a wellness trend covered by NBC's Today show, Healthline, and CBS. It tapped into a growing backlash against constant audio stimulation.
• •Apple kills the mute switch (2023-2024) — When Apple removed the physical mute toggle after 17 years, tech media erupted. Fast Company called it a "mess", NPR covered the story, and accessibility communities raised alarm. The humble mute button became a design controversy.
• •"Calmcation" travel trend (2025-2026) — The rise of silent retreats and digital detox vacations where guests surrender their phones. The WHO estimates 1 million healthy life-years are lost annually to environmental noise in Western Europe alone, making silence a legitimate health intervention.

• •The codepoint is U+1F507U+1F507. Shortcodes: :mute::mute: (GitHub, Slack, Discord). The colon-mute shortcode is one of the most intuitive and memorable in the emoji shortcode system.
• •🔇 is part of a four-emoji volume set: U+1F507U+1F507 (muted), U+1F508U+1F508 (low), U+1F509U+1F509 (medium), U+1F50AU+1F50A (high). They're consecutive codepoints, which is satisfying and makes programmatic handling straightforward.
• •Some notification APIs use this emoji in user-facing messages when a channel or thread is muted. If you're building a mute/unmute toggle, consider using the actual emoji character as the button label for instant recognition.

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