Wingdings Translator Pro

Why Wingdings Translator Pro?

Most Wingdings tools handle one font and one direction. Wingdings Translator Pro puts everything in one place, and it is completely free. “Pro” describes the toolset, not a paid plan: there is no sign-up, no limit and nothing to install.

• Four fonts in one tool: Wingdings, Wingdings 2, Wingdings 3 and Webdings, with the same symbol tables used by the character chart.
• Two-way translation with auto-detect: paste symbols and it switches to decoding and works out which font they came from.
• Accented letters and extended characters: the full font, including the symbols typed with Alt codes, not just A to Z.
• A clickable symbol keyboard for decoding screenshots and photos on the Wingdings to English page.
• Emoji-proof output so symbols keep their plain look on phones, plus share links and PNG export.
• Gaster mode for Undertale fans, with a dedicated Gaster translator.
• Private by design: everything runs in your browser and nothing you type is stored.

What is Wingdings?

Wingdings is a dingbat font: a typeface whose keys produce small pictures instead of letters. Type a capital A in Wingdings and you get a victory hand ✌︎. Type J and you get a smiley ☺︎. The name joins “Windows” and “dingbats”, the printers’ word for decorative symbols, and it carries on a tradition that goes back to metal type and fonts such as Zapf Dingbats.

Microsoft developed Wingdings in 1990 by combining glyphs from three fonts drawn by the type designers Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes: Lucida Icons, Lucida Arrows and Lucida Stars. It has shipped with Microsoft Windows since Windows 3.1 in 1992, which is why nearly every Windows PC still has it installed. Two companion fonts, Wingdings 2 and Wingdings 3, were developed the same year by Type Solutions, Inc., and Webdings followed in 1997.

Wingdings is not a language and it has no grammar. It is a one to one swap: each keyboard character always becomes the same symbol. That makes it a simple substitution cipher, which is exactly why people use it for secret notes, puzzles and game lore.

The Wingdings alphabet

Capital and small letters give different symbols, so H is ☟︎ while h is ♒︎. Numbers turn into folders, files and computer parts: 0 to 9 become 🗀︎🗁︎🗎︎🗏︎🗐︎🗄︎⌛︎🖮︎🖰︎🖲︎. Here is the full A to Z in both cases, with the Unicode code point that makes each symbol copy and paste correctly.

Wingdings vs Wingdings 2 vs Wingdings 3 vs Webdings

The four fonts share one idea but not one symbol set. The same word looks completely different in each, so a message written in one font has to be decoded with that same font.

For secret messages and anything related to Undertale, use the original Wingdings. Wingdings 2 is handy for check boxes and numbered circles, Wingdings 3 for arrows, and Webdings when you want small pictures. Each has its own translator: Wingdings 2, Wingdings 3 and Webdings.

How this translator works, and why copy and paste works everywhere

The real Wingdings font only changes how letters look. If you type “hello” in Word and switch the font to Wingdings, the file still stores the letters h, e, l, l, o. Paste that into WhatsApp or Instagram and it turns back into plain letters, because the app does not use the Wingdings font.

This tool does something different. It replaces each letter with the matching Unicode character. In June 2014, Unicode 7.0 added the Wingdings and Webdings pictographs that were not already part of the standard, so every one of these symbols now has its own code point. The output is real text, not a font trick, which is why it keeps its shape when you paste it into Discord, a text message, a game chat or a document.

Why some symbols turn into colour emoji

A few symbols, such as the thumbs up 👍︎ or the bomb 💣︎, also exist as emoji. Phones like to draw those in colour. Our Emoji-proof output option adds an invisible Unicode “text presentation” selector (U+FE0E) after each symbol, which asks the device to keep the plain, font-style look. Leave it on unless you want colour emoji.

Why a symbol might show as an empty box

An empty box means the device has no font containing that character. On this site we load a small symbol font so every glyph displays. Older phones and some apps may still miss a few rare symbols, mostly in Wingdings 2 and Webdings. The text is still correct and will decode properly.

Wingdings in Undertale and W. D. Gaster

Most people meet Wingdings through Undertale, the 2015 role playing game by Toby Fox. Its hidden character W. D. Gaster speaks in Wingdings, and his initials are a nod to the font’s name, just as the skeleton brothers Sans and Papyrus are named after the fonts Comic Sans and Papyrus. Gaster’s lines use capital letters, so his famous text begins 👎︎✌︎☼︎😐︎ 👎︎✌︎☼︎😐︎☜︎☼︎ ✡︎☜︎❄︎ 👎︎✌︎☼︎😐︎☜︎☼︎.

To write or read Gaster’s messages, turn on Gaster mode above or open the dedicated Gaster translator, which is set up for all caps Wingdings.

Using Wingdings in Word, Google Docs, Discord and social media

Famous Wingdings moments

The “NYC” scare of 1992. Only days after Windows 3.1 came out, people noticed that typing NYC in Wingdings produced a skull and crossbones, a Star of David and a thumbs up: 🕱︎✡︎👍︎. Microsoft said the order of the symbols was essentially random and that no message was intended.

Microsoft’s reply in Webdings. When Vincent Connare and his colleagues designed Webdings in 1997, they deliberately placed an eye, a heart and a city skyline on N, Y and C, so NYC reads as “I love New York”: 👁︎🎔︎🏙︎.

The “Q33 NY” hoax. After the attacks of 11 September 2001, a chain email claimed that “Q33 NY” was the flight number of one of the planes and that typing it in Wingdings showed a plane, two documents, a skull and a Star of David: ✈︎🗏︎🗏︎ 🕱︎✡︎. The claim was false. The flights that struck the World Trade Center were American Airlines 11 and United Airlines 175, and Q33NY was never a flight number.

Ideas for using Wingdings

• Secret notes. Send a friend a line of symbols and a share link, or make them decode it themselves.
• Escape rooms and scavenger hunts. Print a clue in Wingdings with the symbol chart hidden elsewhere in the room.
• Classroom puzzles. Wingdings is a gentle first lesson in substitution ciphers before moving on to Caesar shifts and frequency analysis.
• Game lore and fan art. Write Gaster style lines for Undertale and Deltarune projects.
• Design accents. Use a single arrow, check mark or pointing hand as a clean, scalable icon in documents.

Wingdings is fun, but it is not encryption. Anyone with a decoder like this one can read it in seconds, so never use it to hide passwords or private information.