Speaker Low Volume Emoji
U+1F508:speaker:About Speaker Low Volume 🔈️
Speaker Low Volume () is part of the Objects group in Unicode. Added in Unicode E0.7. Type on GitHub and Slack to use it. Click copy above to grab it, paste it anywhere.
Works in iMessage, WhatsApp, Discord, Slack, Instagram, Twitter, Gmail, and every app that supports Unicode.
Often associated with low, soft, sound, and 2 more keywords.
Scroll down for the full story: meaning, trends, combos, and more.
How it looks
What does it mean?
A speaker cone with no sound waves coming out of it. It's the quietest speaker that's still on, the one between 🔇 muted and 🔉 medium volume. If 🔊 is blasting music at a house party, 🔈 is the volume you drop it to when a neighbor knocks on the door.
The Unicode name is simply SPEAKER, but most platforms render it with the "low volume" label since it sits in context with its louder siblings. It was approved in Unicode 6.0 (2010) and later added to Emoji 1.0. Visually, the key difference from 🔉 and 🔊 is that 🔈 has zero sound wave lines emanating from the cone. It's a speaker that's barely speaking.
In texting, people use it for requests to lower volume, for quiet moments, for whispering, and increasingly as part of the broader "quiet culture" movement. It overlaps with 🔇 but carries a different vibe: muted means silence, low volume means you're still listening, just softly.
🔈 is the polite volume request. Where 🔇 says "shut it down entirely," 🔈 says "hey, could you turn that down a notch?" It shows up in group chats when someone's sharing a video at work ("watch this but 🔈"), in texts about keeping a low profile ("staying 🔈 this weekend"), and in ASMR and whisper content where the whole aesthetic is built around being quiet.
The ASMR connection is worth noting. The global ASMR content market hit $1.42 billion in 2024 and is growing at 16.8% annually. Whisper videos on YouTube and TikTok have turned low volume into an entire entertainment category. When ASMR creators tag their content, 🔈 fits the aesthetic better than 🔊 ever could.
There's also a health angle that gives 🔈 unexpected weight. The WHO estimates 1.1 billion young people are at risk of hearing loss from unsafe headphone volume. The recommended "60/60 rule" (60% volume for 60 minutes) is basically the 🔈 emoji in practice: listen, but keep it low.
It means low volume, quiet, or "keep it down." People use it when asking someone to lower their voice or volume, when sharing that they're in a quiet setting, or when tagging content that's meant to be listened to softly (like ASMR or lo-fi music). It's the emoji version of whispering.
Informally, yes. ASMR creators often use 🔈 in captions and tags because it captures the low-volume aesthetic of whisper content. The ASMR content market hit $1.42 billion in 2024, so there's definitely an audience that associates this emoji with that world.
The Decibel Scale of Everyday Life
Meet the four-speaker Unicode family
Emoji combos
Origin story
The speaker icon has been part of computer interfaces since the earliest GUIs. When Apple introduced the Macintosh in 1984, it included a system volume control with a speaker icon in the menu bar. Windows followed with its own taskbar volume control. By the late 1990s, the speaker-with-waves visual language was universal: more waves meant more volume, no waves meant quiet.
When Unicode standardized emoji in 2010, they encoded the full volume set as four consecutive codepoints: (🔇, muted), (🔈, low), (🔉, medium), (🔊, high). This was unusual for Unicode. Most concepts get a single emoji. Volume got a four-step gradient, a direct translation of the OS volume indicator that had been on every computer screen for two decades.
The design language traces back even further to physical audio equipment. Speaker icons on amplifiers and stereo receivers in the 1960s and 1970s used the same cone-shaped symbol. The sound wave lines were a visual metaphor borrowed from physics diagrams showing how sound propagates through air.
Approved in Unicode 6.0 (2010) under the name . Added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. The original name is just "SPEAKER" with no volume qualifier, making it the base icon in the set. 🔉 () and 🔊 () build on top of it. The name was later clarified to "Speaker Low Volume" for consistency, since showing it alongside its siblings needed a clear label.
Search interest
Often confused with
🔉 has one sound wave line, meaning medium volume. 🔈 has zero sound waves, meaning the lowest non-mute setting. The visual difference is subtle on some platforms, so people often grab whichever one they find first. If you want to emphasize quiet, pick 🔈.
🔉 has one sound wave line, meaning medium volume. 🔈 has zero sound waves, meaning the lowest non-mute setting. The visual difference is subtle on some platforms, so people often grab whichever one they find first. If you want to emphasize quiet, pick 🔈.
🔊 is the loud one, three sound waves blasting out. It's the opposite end of the spectrum from 🔈. Where 🔈 whispers, 🔊 shouts. Use 🔊 for announcements, hype, and "turn it up." Use 🔈 for "actually, turn it down."
🔊 is the loud one, three sound waves blasting out. It's the opposite end of the spectrum from 🔈. Where 🔈 whispers, 🔊 shouts. Use 🔊 for announcements, hype, and "turn it up." Use 🔈 for "actually, turn it down."
🔈 is quiet but still on. 🔇 is completely silent (the speaker has a red slash through it). Think of it like your phone: 🔈 is vibrate or low ringer. 🔇 is full Do Not Disturb mode. Use 🔇 when you want total silence, 🔈 when you still want to hear things at low volume.
The number of sound wave lines tells you the volume. 🔈 has zero waves (barely audible). 🔉 has one wave (moderate). 🔊 has three waves (loud). Together with 🔇 (muted), they form a four-step volume gradient. Their Unicode codepoints are consecutive: U+1F507 through U+1F50A.
The Speaker Volume Family Tree
| Emoji | Waves | Volume | When to use | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🔇 | 🔇 | None (slashed) | Muted | Full silence, phone off, DND mode |
| 🔈 | 🔈 | None | Low | Whisper, keep it down, quiet setting |
| 🔉 | 🔉 | One | Medium | Normal volume, casual listening |
| 🔊 | 🔊 | Three | High | Loud music, announcements, hype |
Do's and don'ts
- ✓Use 🔈 when asking someone to lower their volume politely
- ✓Pair it with music or video emojis when sharing content that should be watched quietly
- ✓Use it for ASMR or lo-fi aesthetic posts
- ✓Include it when recommending white noise or sleep sounds
- ✗Don't use 🔈 when you mean mute (that's 🔇)
- ✗Don't assume 🔈 means silence, it means quiet but still audible
- ✗Avoid using it passive-aggressively to tell someone they're too loud (use words for that)
The WHO recommends the 60/60 rule: listen at no more than 60% of maximum volume for no more than 60 minutes at a time. This helps prevent noise-induced hearing loss. Earbuds at max volume can hit 110 dB, which can damage hearing in as little as 5 minutes.
Caption ideas
Aesthetic sets
Type it as text
The Billion-Dollar Whisper: ASMR Market Growth
Fun facts
- •🔈's original Unicode name is just , with no volume qualifier. It's the base icon that 🔉 and 🔊 build on by adding sound wave lines.
- •The WHO estimates 1.1 billion young people are at risk of hearing loss from unsafe headphone volume. The recommended 60/60 rule (60% volume, 60 minutes) is essentially the 🔈 lifestyle.
- •In 2017, Reddit's r/ProgrammerHumor ran a viral competition to design the worst volume slider possible. The winning entry by MrTarantula (a manual car window crank) got over 39,100 upvotes. The trend spawned a Know Your Meme entry and is still referenced in UI/UX design courses.
- •The ASMR content market reached $1.42 billion in 2024, with North America accounting for 39% of global revenue. Low-volume content went from a YouTube curiosity to a billion-dollar industry.
- •A whisper registers at about 30 dB. Normal conversation is 60 dB. Max earbuds volume can hit 110 dB, enough to cause damage in 5 minutes.
- •The four volume emojis (🔇🔈🔉🔊) have consecutive Unicode codepoints: through . It's one of the tidiest sequences in the emoji standard.
Why 🔈 Might Save Your Hearing
What volume do you usually listen at?
Common misinterpretations
- •People sometimes use 🔈 thinking it means mute. It doesn't. If you want silence, use 🔇. 🔈 still has sound, it's just quiet.
- •On some platforms, the visual difference between 🔈 and 🔉 is almost invisible. Samsung and Google render them quite similarly. Check which codepoint you're actually sending if precision matters.
- •Sending someone just "🔈" without context can be confusing. Does it mean turn down the volume? Keep quiet? Listen closely? Add a word or two to make the intent clear.
In pop culture
- •Reddit's Worst Volume Sliders (2017) — A viral r/ProgrammerHumor thread challenged developers to design the most unusable volume control. Entries included a slider that required solving a captcha, one controlled by screaming into your microphone, and a volume knob you had to rotate using your phone's gyroscope. It became a Know Your Meme entry and is still shared in UX/UI design communities years later.
- •ASMR's mainstream breakthrough — What started as obscure YouTube whisper videos in 2010 became a $1.42 billion market by 2024. Top ASMR creators earn up to $1 million monthly. The entire genre is built around the 🔈 aesthetic: low volume, soft sounds, and the paradox of content designed to be barely heard.
- •"Whisper networks" and #MeToo (2017-2018) — The term "whisper network" gained mainstream awareness during the #MeToo movement, referring to informal channels where women shared warnings about harassers. The concept of quiet, low-volume communication as a survival tool added a serious dimension to the idea of "keeping things at 🔈."
- •The quiet luxury trend (2023-2024) — Fashion's "quiet luxury" movement, inspired by shows like Succession, celebrated understated, logo-free clothing. The cultural vibe extended beyond fashion into how people presented themselves online: less noise, more substance. 🔈 energy over 🔊 energy.
Trivia
For developers
- •The codepoint is . Shortcodes: (GitHub), or (Slack). Note that without qualifiers maps to this low-volume version, not 🔊.
- •The four volume emojis occupy consecutive codepoints through . If you're building a volume display, you can calculate the correct emoji with simple arithmetic: where level is 0-3.
- •Some platforms render 🔈 and 🔉 nearly identically. If you're using these as UI indicators, consider adding text labels alongside the emoji for accessibility.
🔈 was approved in Unicode 6.0 in 2010 under the name SPEAKER (no volume qualifier). It became available on all major platforms when included in Emoji 1.0 in 2015. The name was later updated to "Speaker Low Volume" for clarity.
The visual difference is subtle: 🔈 has no sound wave lines, while 🔉 has one small wave. Some platform renderers (particularly older Samsung and Google versions) make them look nearly identical. If you need to be specific about volume level, add a text label alongside the emoji.
See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.
What does 🔈 energy mean to you?
Select all that apply
- Speaker Low Volume Emoji (emojipedia.org)
- Purposefully Bad Volume Sliders - Know Your Meme (knowyourmeme.com)
- Bored programmers on Reddit are competing to design the shittiest volume slider (thenextweb.com)
- ASMR Content Market Research Report 2033 (dataintelo.com)
- Earbuds & Hearing Loss in the Young - Mayo Clinic (mayoclinichealthsystem.org)
- Noise-Induced Hearing Loss (NIHL) - NIDCD (nidcd.nih.gov)
- Impact on Hearing Due to Prolonged Use of Audio Devices (PMC) (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
- Whisper network - Wikipedia (wikipedia.org)
- Media control symbols - Wikipedia (wikipedia.org)
- Full Emoji List v17.0 (unicode.org)
- How NOT to design a volume control interface (adhamdannaway.com)
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