Wingdings Translator: Type in Wingdings & Translate Back
Translate text to Wingdings symbols or decode Wingdings back to normal text. Supports all four dingbat fonts: Wingdings, Wingdings 2, Wingdings 3, and Webdings. Displays the full character map so you can see every symbol, and converts bidirectionally so you can both encode and decode Wingdings messages.
Bidirectional translation — type normal text to get Wingdings symbols, or paste Wingdings Unicode symbols to decode them back to letters.
Supports all four dingbat fonts: Wingdings, Wingdings 2, Wingdings 3, and Webdings — each with its own character mapping and visual style.
Full character map displayed on the page so you can browse every symbol, click to copy individual glyphs, and understand what each letter maps to.
Renders the Wingdings output using a web font so the symbols display as intended even on systems where the Wingdings font is not installed.
Shows the Unicode codepoints for each symbol so you can use them in HTML, CSS, and code without needing the font file.
One-click copy sends the full translated string to your clipboard, ready to paste into any document or application that has the Wingdings font applied.
How to Use
Type or paste normal text into the input box to see the Wingdings equivalent
Select which font variant to use — Wingdings, Wingdings 2, Wingdings 3, or Webdings
To decode Wingdings, paste symbols into the input and click the Decode button
Browse the character map to explore all available symbols
Click Copy to copy the translated text to your clipboard
Fun and Novelty
- Encoding secret messages in Wingdings
- Creating Wingdings puzzles for friends
- Decoding mystery Wingdings text found online
- Nostalgia for the classic Windows font
Design and Documents
- Adding Wingdings symbols as decorative bullets
- Using Webdings icons in Word documents
- Wingdings check marks and crosses in forms
- Decorative separators using Wingdings symbols
Education and Trivia
- Demonstrating character encoding concepts
- Recreating the famous Wingdings NYC coincidence
- Font history and typography lessons
- Puzzle and escape room design
| Original Text | Result |
|---|---|
A | ✌ (Wingdings — peace/victory hand) |
B | 👌 (Wingdings — OK hand) |
hello | ♑♏●●□ (Wingdings) |
NYC | ☠✡👍 (Wingdings) |
I love you | 🖐 ●□❖♏ ⮹□◆ (Wingdings) |
Document Applications
- Microsoft Word
- Microsoft PowerPoint
- Google Docs (with font applied)
- LibreOffice Writer
Web and Design
- HTML documents (using Wingdings web font)
- CSS content properties
- Figma (with font loaded)
- Adobe Illustrator
Wingdings output only renders as symbols in applications where the Wingdings font is applied. If you paste the translated characters into a plain text editor or social media, they will display as the underlying Unicode symbol characters — not as Wingdings font glyphs. To share a genuine Wingdings document, use Microsoft Word with the Wingdings font applied to the translated text.
The famous 'NYC' Wingdings sequence (✈☠✡) — where N maps to an airplane, Y maps to a skull and crossbones, and C maps to a Star of David — is the most notorious Wingdings coincidence. It predates 9/11 by a decade; Microsoft included Wingdings in Windows 3.1 in 1992. The symbol sequence results from Wingdings' assignment of symbols to letter positions, not intentional design.
Webdings was designed specifically for web use and shipped with Internet Explorer 4 in 1997. Its symbols include web-specific icons like browser buttons and interface elements. If you need a classic web icon set, Webdings covers many UI concepts that predate modern icon fonts like Font Awesome.
For Word documents, Wingdings symbols are often used as decorative bullets or check marks. The most commonly used Wingdings characters in business documents are: ✓ (check mark, letter a in Wingdings 2), ✗ (cross mark), ● (filled circle), □ (empty box), and various arrows. These are faster to insert via Wingdings than hunting through Word's Symbol dialog.
Always specify which Wingdings variant you used when sharing encoded text — Wingdings, Wingdings 2, Wingdings 3, and Webdings use different mappings, so a message encoded in one variant will decode incorrectly if the recipient uses a different one.
For documents that need to be portable across systems, use Unicode symbol characters rather than Wingdings encoding — a Unicode check mark (✓ U+2713) displays correctly everywhere without a specific font, while a Wingdings check mark displays as a Latin letter on systems without the font.
In Word documents, use the Symbol dialog (Insert → Symbol → Wingdings) rather than this translator for final production — it inserts the character with the correct font applied, ensuring reliable rendering in the document regardless of where it is opened.
For web use, load Wingdings as a web font via @font-face if you need authentic Wingdings rendering — do not rely on the user's system having Wingdings installed, as macOS and Linux systems do not include it by default.
Frequently Asked Questions
Find answers to common questions about our tools and services.
Understanding Wingdings Translator
Wingdings has a stranger history than most people realize. The font was created by Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes — the same designers behind the Lucida font family — and licensed to Microsoft in 1990. The name is a portmanteau of 'Windows dingbats,' coined to distinguish it from the dingbat fonts already common in PostScript printing. Microsoft bundled it with Windows 3.1 in 1992 and it has shipped with every version of Windows since, making it one of the most widely distributed fonts in computing history despite being almost entirely useless for normal typography.
The symbol-to-key mapping in Wingdings is not random, but it is not phonetically meaningful either. The assignments reflect a rough thematic organization: the early letters map to hand gestures (pointing hands, peace signs), the middle range covers geometric shapes and common symbols, and the later letters include miscellaneous icons. The exact assignments were made by the designers and have remained fixed since 1992, which is what makes the NYC mapping a fixed artifact rather than a variable coincidence.
Webdings, developed separately by Microsoft in 1997, took a different approach. Rather than arbitrary symbol assignments, Webdings was designed around the metaphor of the web and the browser interface — its symbols include browser navigation icons, hand cursors, and web-specific imagery. Microsoft designed it specifically for use on web pages where icon fonts were not yet standard, predating Font Awesome by over a decade. The deliberate NYC→👁❤🗽 mapping in Webdings was added as a direct response to the Wingdings controversy.
The technical limitation that makes Wingdings non-portable is its use of the Latin character range. In a properly Unicode-aware text system, the byte sequence for the letter 'A' (0x41) should always produce the glyph for 'A'. Wingdings violates this by using the same byte to produce a pointing hand. This works only because the font file substitutes its own glyphs for the Latin codepoints. When the font is absent, the underlying ASCII characters appear. This is the core reason why Unicode was created — to make text encoding font-independent.
Despite its technical anachronism, Wingdings persists in the real world in two main contexts. First, in Microsoft Office documents — Word and PowerPoint templates from the 1990s and 2000s frequently used Wingdings symbols as decorative elements, check marks, and bullets. These documents are still in circulation and IT departments occasionally need to decode or reproduce the symbols. Second, in internet culture — the Wingdings font became a meme vector, with the NYC conspiracy being only the most famous example. Online communities regularly discover new Wingdings sequences and analyze them for hidden meaning.