Star Symbols: Copy and Paste Text Stars

How to use the star symbols

1. Find the star symbol you need in any of the groups above.
2. Click or tap the character to highlight it, then press Ctrl+C (Windows/Linux) or Cmd+C (Mac) to copy.
3. Move to your document, message or code editor and press Ctrl+V or Cmd+V to paste.
4. For web pages, use the HTML entity or Unicode code point listed below each symbol instead of pasting the raw character.

Common Five-Pointed Star Symbols

The most widely used text stars are the five-pointed varieties. The filled black star (U+2605) and the hollow white star (U+2606) appear in ratings, bullet lists and game interfaces. Both sit in the Miscellaneous Symbols block of Unicode.

When building a rating display, developers often repeat the filled star for earned points and the hollow star for remaining points. For example, three out of five renders as ★★★☆☆.

Sparkles and Four-Pointed Stars

Four-pointed star symbols serve as decorative accents. The black four pointed star (U+2726) and white four pointed star (U+2727) are common in print and digital design. The sparkle emoji (U+2728) is rendered as a cluster of small stars on most platforms and is popular in social media captions.

Note that U+2726 and U+2727 are technically four-pointed despite the word "star" in their Unicode names. They belong to the Dingbats block alongside other ornamental characters. If you also need directional markers, see the arrow symbols page.

How to Type Star Symbols on Any Platform

Typing star symbols depends on your operating system. On Windows, hold the Alt key and type the decimal code on the numeric keypad. For the black star, press Alt+9733. For the white star, press Alt+9734. This requires a full keyboard with a number pad; laptop users may need to enable Num Lock or use the Character Map utility.

On macOS, open the Character Viewer by pressing Cmd+Ctrl+Space. Search for "star" to browse all available text stars, then double-click to insert one at the cursor position. You can also add frequently used symbols to your Favorites bar for quick access.

On Linux with GTK applications, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type the hexadecimal code point (for example, 2605 for the black star), then press Enter or Space. In terminal emulators, you can echo the UTF-8 bytes directly using printf '\u2605'.

In HTML, use the numeric character reference. The black star is ★ (decimal) or ★ (hexadecimal). Always declare your document encoding as UTF-8 with a meta tag to ensure correct rendering across browsers.

Star Emoji vs. Text Stars

A star emoji such as U+2B50 differs from a text star like U+2605 in how platforms render it. Emoji are drawn as colorful images by the operating system or application, while text stars inherit the font, size and color of surrounding text. This distinction matters when you want consistent styling.

Some code points, like U+2605, can be forced into emoji presentation by appending the variation selector U+FE0F, though support varies. For reliable cross-platform results, stick to dedicated emoji code points when you want color art, and plain text stars when you need typographic control.

Practical Uses for Star Characters

Star symbols appear in many everyday contexts. Product reviews use rows of filled and hollow stars to show ratings out of five. Game interfaces display them to represent lives, achievements or level completion. In plain-text documents where rich formatting is unavailable, a line of stars serves as a visual separator.

Astronomers and navigators historically used specific star glyphs in charts. The sextile symbol (U+26B9) marks a 60-degree angle between celestial bodies. The Star of David (U+2721) carries cultural and religious significance beyond decoration.

Developers working with regular expressions should know that the asterisk (*, U+002A) is a quantifier meaning "zero or more." It is not a decorative star symbol, even though it resembles one. Confusing the two in search patterns is a common source of bugs. For other decorative punctuation, the heart symbols collection follows a similar copy-and-paste format.

Worked examples

Each result below was produced by the same code the tool runs, so you can check your own numbers against them.

Reference pages

• Symbols to copy and paste: Unicode, HTML codes and Alt codes for popular symbols.