or tap the emoji anywhere on this site
💡Light Bulb Emoji
💡 is the light bulb emoji, U+1F4A1, one of 16 in the Light, Film & Video set. It arrived with Unicode 6.0 (2010) and is commonly used for bulb, comic and electric.
What 💡 light bulb means
Filming, photography and the act of looking closely all live here. 🎥 and 🎬️ tag video work, 📸 credits a photo, and the two magnifying glasses cover searching, investigating and zooming in on somebody else's mistake. 💡 means an idea, a convention borrowed from cartoons. The diya lamp 🪔, added in Emoji 12.0 in 2019, appears mainly around Diwali.
Unicode tags this one bulb, comic and electric and files it under Objects → Light, Film & Video.
Shortcodes
Type these instead of pasting — most chat apps expand them as you type.
Codes & technical data
| Unicode | U+1F4A1 | |
|---|---|---|
| HTML hex | 💡 | |
| HTML decimal | 💡 | |
| CSS | \1F4A1 | |
| JavaScript | \u{1F4A1} | |
| Python | \U0001F4A1 | |
| Java / C# | \uD83D\uDCA1 | |
| Rust | \u{1f4a1} | |
| Swift | \u{1F4A1} | |
| PHP | \u{1F4A1} | |
| URL encoded | %F0%9F%92%A1 | |
| UTF-8 bytes | F0 9F 92 A1 | |
| UTF-16 bytes | D83D DCA1 | |
| Base64 | 8J+SoQ== | |
| Decimal | 128161 | |
| Introduced | Unicode 6.0 (2010) | |
Keywords
Appears in these collections
How to type 💡
- Windows — press
Win + .and search “light bulb”. - macOS — press
Ctrl + Cmd + Spaceto open the character viewer. - iOS & Android — switch to the emoji keyboard and type “bulb”.
- Linux — press
Ctrl + Shift + U, then type1f4a1and Enter. - HTML — paste
💡.
How 💡 renders
The same character drawn with whichever emoji fonts your device has installed. Apple, Google and Microsoft each draw it differently, so what you see below depends on what you are reading this on.
- 💡Apple
- 💡Segoe
- 💡Noto
- 💡System
Frequently asked questions
What does the 💡 light bulb emoji mean?+
💡 is the light bulb emoji, tagged bulb, comic and electric. Filming, photography and the act of looking closely all live here. 🎥 and 🎬️ tag video work, 📸 credits a photo, and the two magnifying glasses cover searching, investigating and zooming in on somebody else's mistake. 💡 means an idea, a convention borrowed from cartoons. The diya lamp 🪔, added in Emoji 12.0 in 2019, appears mainly around Diwali.
What is the Unicode code for 💡?+
light bulb is U+1F4A1. In HTML that is 💡, in CSS \1F4A1, and in JavaScript \u{1F4A1}. The full table above lists every escape format.
When was the 💡 emoji added?+
light bulb got its emoji presentation in Unicode 6.0 (2010). Platforms that shipped before that release may draw it in plain text, or not at all — that is why the same character can look different on an old phone.
Related emojis
More emojis from Light, Film & Video in Objects.
Added in Unicode 6.0 (2010)
Other emojis that shipped in the same Unicode release as 💡 light bulb.