Keycap Sequence

Technical/Unicode

An emoji sequence formed by a digit or symbol, followed by VS-16 (U+FE0F) and the combining enclosing keycap character (U+20E3).

Keycap emoji represent keys on a telephone or keyboard. They are formed from three characters: a base character (0-9, *, or #), VS-16 to request emoji presentation, and U+20E3 (combining enclosing keycap) to add the visual key border.

For example, 2️⃣ is: `2` (U+0032) + `VS-16` (U+FE0F) + `⃣` (U+20E3). There are 12 keycap sequences in total: digits 0-9, asterisk (*), and hash (#).

These are among the oldest emoji sequences and demonstrate how Unicode combines existing characters with modifiers rather than assigning entirely new code points.

Related Terms

Emoji Sequence Emoji Sequence
An ordered set of one or more Unicode code points that together represent a single emoji character.
Variation Selector (VS) Variation Selector (VS)
Unicode characters (VS-15 U+FE0E and VS-16 U+FE0F) that modify whether a character renders in text (monochrome) or emoji (colorful) presentation.

Related Tools

🔍 Sequence Analyzer Sequence Analyzer
Decode ZWJ sequences, skin tone modifiers, keycap sequences, and flag pairs into individual components.
🔢 Unicode Lookup Unicode Lookup
Enter a codepoint like U+1F600 and get the emoji, encoding details, UTF-8/16 bytes, and HTML entities.