Circled Information Source refers to a proposed or suggested emoji concept depicting a lowercase โiโ inside a circle, the familiar help/info icon seen in user interfaces. In mid-2010s emoji discussions, some people requested a distinct, clearly circled โinfoโ mark to use for FAQs, support messages, and FYI posts. As a separate, newly encoded emoji, this concept did not materialize; Unicode already had U+2139 INFORMATION SOURCE, which is commonly rendered as a circled โiโ and gained emoji presentation on platforms. Because the idea largely overlapped with that existing character, a standalone โCircled Information Sourceโ entry was considered redundant and was not adopted as a separate emoji.
Supporters wanted a crisp, unmistakable symbol for โmore details,โ โread this first,โ onboarding tips, and customer help links. It would have also served conversational tones like FYI, well-actually corrections, and โsee info belowโ callouts in chats, social posts, and documentation. In internet culture, the circled i is shorthand for tooltips, info popovers, and knowledge-base links, which made it appealing as a lightweight way to guide readers without typing long explanations. The appeal was both practical (clear UI signposting) and expressive (a polite or slightly nerdy nudge to read the details).
Concept art and mockups typically imagined a bright blue circle with a white lowercase โi,โ sometimes glossy in older skeuomorphic styles, and flat with simple geometry in postโiOS 7 designs. An Apple-like appearance might have shown a bold blue disc and centered white โi,โ while Android-era mockups could lean toward Holo or Material blues; other sketches used a black ring outline with a solid โi.โ Since no new character was officially designed for this purpose, these remain likely or conceptual treatments rather than canonical art. In practice, platforms continued to style the existing INFORMATION SOURCE character โน๏ธ to meet this visual expectation, which reduced momentum for a separate circled variant.
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Emoji History The emoji code/ image log of changes.
This emoji was one of the "suggested emojis" the Unicode group unveiled in June 2014 [article], however, it has been, and still is, up to the companies who support emoji in their operating systems to provide not only images but also an algorithm to replace the emoji code into the emoji image.
