Which sun symbol should you use?
☀︎ (black sun with rays) is the standard sun. It is the very first character of Unicode's Miscellaneous Symbols block, and it is the sign weather apps use for "sunny". On phones it often turns into the yellow ☀️ emoji, so use the text or emoji switch on this page to pick the look you want.
☼ (white sun with rays) is the outlined version, and ☉ is the astronomical sign for the Sun: a circle with a dot in the middle. 🌞 is the sun with a face, while 🔆 and 🔅 are the high and low brightness icons you know from screen settings. 🌣 is a plain white sun that only newer fonts include.
What the sun symbol means
In astronomy, ☉ stands for the Sun itself: one solar mass is written M☉. Astrologers use the same sign for your sun sign, and old alchemy books used it for gold, just as the crescent ☽ stood for silver.
In everyday messages the sun means summer, warm weather, a good mood and new beginnings. In Japanese, the character 日 means both "sun" and "day", and Japan's own name 日本 (Nihon) means "origin of the sun", which is where "Land of the Rising Sun" comes from.
How to type the sun symbol
On Windows, hold Alt and type 15 on the number pad to get ☼ in most programs. For the emoji, press Windows + . (period) and search for "sun". On a Mac, press Control + Command + Space to open the emoji and symbol viewer and search there.
In Microsoft Word, type 2600 and press Alt + X to turn it into ☀︎. On iPhone and Android, open the emoji keyboard and search for "sun". In LaTeX math, astronomers write the solar mass as M_\odot. Every HTML code is in the table below.
Sun symbols for bios and captions
The sun pairs well with the moon, so ☀︎ ⋆˙⟡ ☾ makes a simple day-and-night divider. Find more crescents on the moon symbol page, and add twinkles from the sparkle symbols to make a summer bio glow.
Text suns like ☀︎ ☼ ☉ take the color of the text around them, which suits minimalist or aesthetic profiles. Use 🌞 or ☀️ when you want a bright yellow pop.