The keycap: * is the star button from your phone keypad, dressed up as a chunky, tappable emoji. It brings instant "press star to continue" energy—think customer service mazes, IVR menus, and throwback star codes like *67 to hide your caller ID or *69 to call back (aka retro life hacks). Online, it doubles as the dramatic-action marker for chat roleplay—*whispers*, *slow clap*, *teleports behind you*—and the louder, more playful cousin of the plain asterisk you’d use for typos, footnotes, italics, or wildcard searches. It also pops up for cheeky censorship (f***), sarcastic disclaimers, and that wink-wink “terms and conditions apply” vibe.
On Apple devices, it’s a bold white six-point asterisk centered on a glossy blue rounded square with a soft gradient and a slight drop shadow—basically a press-me-now dialer key. You’ll instantly recognize it as the star that lives beside 0 and across from the hashtag keycap #️⃣, radiating phone UI nostalgia. In memes and tweets, it says “tap for more drama,” fuels *NSYNC-era callbacks, and turns any sentence into a footnote with attitude. It’s the star you hit when you need emphasis, irony, or a little telecom theater.
| Twitter Emoji Popularity (Rank) | 744 of 2393 |
| Apple/iOS Picture |  |
| Google Android Picture |  |
| Google Hangouts Picture | Image not available |
| Twitter.com Picture | Image not available |
| LG Emoji Picture | Image not available |
| Samsung Emoji Picture | Image not available |
| Phantom Open Emoji Picture | Not created yet |
| ASCII Conversion | |
| "Short Code" Name | |
| Keywords | |
| Previous Names: | Keycap Asterisk |
| Emoji Code Version | iOS 9 - Current |
|---|---|
| UTF-8 Unicode Character(s) | *️⃣ |
| UTF-8 Character Count | 3 |
| Character(s) In Input | |
| AppleColorEmoji Font (available in OSX/iOS) | *️⃣ |
| Decimal HTML Entity | * ️ ⃣ |
| Hexadecimal HTML Entity | * ️ ⃣ |
| Hex Code Point(s) | 2a, fe0f, 20e3 |
| Formal Unicode Notation | U+2A, U+FE0F, U+20E3 |
| Decimal Code Point(s) | 42, 65039, 8419 | UTF-8 Hex (C Syntax) | 0x2A, 0xEF 0xB8 0x8F, 0xE2 0x83 0xA3 |
| UTF-8 Hex Bytes | 2A, EF B8 8F, E2 83 A3 |
| UTF-8 Octal Bytes | 52, 357 270 217, 342 203 243 |
| UTF-16 Hex (C Syntax) | 0x002A, 0xFE0F, 0x20E3 |
| UTF-16 Hex | 002a, fe0f, 20e3 |
| UTF-16 Dec | 42, 65039, 8419 |
| UTF-32 Hex (C Syntax) | 0x0000002A 0x0000FE0F 0x000020E3 |
| UTF-32 Hex | 2A, FE0F, 20E3 |
| UTF-32 Dec | 42, 65039, 8419 |
| Python Src | u"\u002A\uFE0F\u20E3" |
| PHP Src | "\x2a\xef\xb8\x8f\xe2\x83\xa3" |
| C/C++/Java Src | "\u002A\uFE0F\u20E3" |
