Webdings Translator

How to use the Webdings translator

1. Pick Webdings in the font selector and type in the English box. The pictures appear as you type. Use Copy to paste them elsewhere, Save as PNG for an image, or Share link to send the message as a link.
2. To read Webdings, press the arrow between the two labels and paste the symbols. The translator shows the font it detected, and you can use Change if it chose the wrong one.
3. Only have a screenshot? Open the symbol keyboard below the translator and tap each symbol you see to decode it.

Webdings character chart

Webdings gives a picture to all 94 printable keyboard characters. Find any key in the chart below, with its symbol, Unicode name, code point and a copy button.

How Webdings differs from Wingdings

Webdings is not a newer edition of Wingdings. It came about five years later from a different team, and on the keyboard keys the two fonts do not share a single symbol. Wingdings fills its capital letters with hands, faces and religious signs and puts the zodiac signs on the caret, underscore, backtick and lowercase a to i. Webdings has none of those. Its capital letters are mostly buildings and landscapes, such as houses, a factory, a stadium, a desert island and a snow capped mountain. Its lowercase letters are mostly vehicles: a bicycle, an ambulance, a police car, a fire engine, a bus, a metro train, a small airplane and a motor boat. For a longer side by side look, read Webdings vs Wingdings.

What Webdings was made for

Microsoft's Webdings page says the font was designed in 1997 for web designers who wanted a fast, easy way to add graphics to their pages. A font scales cleanly and renders quickly, so a page could show icons without making visitors wait for image files. Microsoft added Webdings to its core fonts for the Web on June 4, 1997, and it was installed with Internet Explorer 4.0 from July 14, 1997. The same page lists it in Windows from Windows 98 through Windows 11, and it also appears on Microsoft's list of cloud fonts in Office.

That purpose still shows in the layout. Microsoft describes "User Interface icons suitable for creating page navigation elements", and you can see them on the number row: window buttons on 0 to 2, then a full set of media player controls, including play (⏵︎), pause (⏸︎), stop (⏹︎) and record (⏺︎).

Webdings symbols became part of Unicode in version 7.0, released in June 2014, which is why they can now be copied as text. This site does not offer the Webdings font file, and the translator does not need it.

A tour of the Webdings keys

The font follows keyboard order, so the symbols come in rough groups:

• Punctuation from ! to the slash: a spider and its web, a no piracy sign, dark sunglasses, a trophy, a military medal, linked paperclips, speech and mood bubbles, a hot pepper, a reminder ribbon, a checker board and a heavy slash.
• The number row and nearby keys: window buttons, media controls, an increase font size symbol, a ballot box, and a hammer and wrench on the at sign.
• A to T: buildings and places, with an eye on N, an ear on O, a magnifying glass on L and a passenger ship on T.
• U to Z: bullhorns, speakers, a heart and a bouquet of flowers.
• The brackets and nearby keys: thought bubbles, groups of speech bubbles, a heavy backslash and four arrows circling.
• Lowercase a to w: vehicles, plus a check mark on a, black and white squares, a shield, a package, an information sign, a levitating man in a business suit, a question mark and a flag in a hole.
• The last few keys: circled signs, a no smoking sign, anger bubbles and a lightning symbol, among others.

Tips for Webdings messages

Webdings gives capital and lowercase letters different pictures, so "bus" and "BUS" are not the same message. When you decode, paste exactly what you received.

Because the pictures carry meaning of their own, short words can turn into small scenes. Try your name or a city, then copy the result, or save it as a PNG if you want the pictures to stay exactly as they look on your screen.

More symbol font tools

All four Microsoft symbol fonts work in the same translator. Each also has its own page:

• The Wingdings translator, for the original font with hands, faces and zodiac signs, and the Wingdings alphabet chart for its keys.
• The Wingdings 2 translator, for check boxes, pointing hands and circled numbers.
• The Wingdings 3 translator, for arrows and triangles.
• A guide on how to type in Wingdings and the other symbol fonts on your own computer.