How to Decode Wingdings: Step-by-Step Guide to Translating Symbols Back to English
Have you ever received a cryptic string of hands, arrows, skulls, and zodiac signs in a Discord chat, a WhatsApp text, or a Reddit thread? Or maybe you stumbled upon an ARG puzzle, a mystery geocache note, or a creepy in-game note from Undertale’s W.D. Gaster:
🕈︎☜︎☹︎👍︎⚐︎💣︎☜︎
At first glance, it looks like an impossible alien script or an unbreakable secret cipher.
The good news? Wingdings is not an actual encrypted code—it is simply a 1-to-1 character substitution font. Every individual symbol directly corresponds to a normal letter on your standard keyboard.
In this step-by-step tutorial, you will learn how to decode Wingdings back into plain, readable English, whether you have the symbols as copyable text, inside a picture or screenshot, or on a printed document.
Method 1: The Fastest Way — Use an Online Wingdings Decoder (Recommended)
If you can highlight and copy the Wingdings symbols from your screen, an online reverse translator will decode your message in less than two seconds.
Here is how to do it:
- Highlight the mystery symbols and copy them (
Ctrl + Con Windows,Cmd + Con Mac, or long-press on mobile). - Visit the free Wingdings Translator.
- Paste the symbols into the text field.
- The tool’s automated Reverse Decoder will instantly read the Unicode glyphs and display the translated English text right below it.
- Hit Copy to save the deciphered message!
Why this works: Modern Wingdings tools translate characters using standardized Unicode mapping. Unlike old software, you don’t need to manually guess which font family was used.
Method 2: How to Decode Wingdings from a Screenshot or Image (OCR)
What if you found the Wingdings symbols inside a meme, a video game screenshot, a YouTube video, or a scanned PDF where you cannot highlight the text?
Typing out complex symbols by hand is frustrating and prone to errors. Instead, use an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) symbol scanner.
Step-by-Step Image Decoding:
- Take a screenshot or save the image containing the Wingdings text to your phone or computer.
- Go to our dedicated Wingdings Translator from Image tool.
- Upload your image file (
.png,.jpg, or.webp). - The tool’s AI vision engine will scan the shapes, match each icon to its corresponding Wingdings character, and output the decoded English translation automatically!
Method 3: The Microsoft Word Trick (For Desktop Documents)
If someone sent you a Microsoft Word document (.docx) or an email written entirely in Wingdings, you can often decode it without using any external tools at all.
This happens because the author simply typed normal English letters and changed the font dropdown to Wingdings.
How to Reveal the Text in Word:
- Open the document in Microsoft Word.
- Highlight all the Wingdings symbols with your mouse (or press
Ctrl + A). - Look up at the Font selector on the Home ribbon (which will show Wingdings).
- Click the dropdown and change the font to a standard text font, such as Arial, Calibri, or Times New Roman.
- The symbols will instantly transform back into normal English letters right before your eyes!
(Note: If the text was pasted as universal Unicode symbols rather than a font format, this trick won’t work—in that case, use Method 1 above).
Method 4: Manual Decoding with the Wingdings Alphabet Chart
If you want to feel like a real detective solving an ARG puzzle, you can decipher the message letter-by-letter using a translation key.
Here is the quick-reference decoding key for the most common uppercase Wingdings characters:
| Symbol | English Letter | Symbol | English Letter |
|---|---|---|---|
| ✌︎ | A | ☠︎ | N |
| 👌︎ | B | ⚐︎ | O |
| 👍︎ | C | | P |
| 👎︎ | D | ✈︎ | Q |
| ☜︎ | E | ☼︎ | R |
| ☞︎ | F | 💧︎ | S |
| ☝︎ | G | 🕈︎ | W |
(For the complete, comprehensive table covering lowercase letters, numbers, punctuation, and Alt codes, visit our Wingdings Chart & Complete Symbol List).
3 Common Mistakes When Decoding Wingdings
If your decoded message comes out looking like gibberish, check for these three common issues:
1. Capitalization Matters!
Wingdings assigns completely different symbols to uppercase and lowercase letters.
- An uppercase
Aproduces the Victory hand (✌︎). - A lowercase
aproduces a tape dispenser or office icon.
If you are decoding text from Undertale lore, remember that W.D. Gaster exclusively speaks in ALL CAPS. If your translation looks scrambled, try converting the symbols against uppercase letters.
2. Wingdings 1 vs. Wingdings 2 vs. Wingdings 3
There are multiple versions of the font!
- Wingdings 1: Contains hands, faces, stars, and basic arrows.
- Wingdings 2: Contains tick boxes, numbers in circles, and pens.
- Wingdings 3: Contains almost exclusively directional arrows and triangles.
- Webdings: Contains web graphics like beaches, TVs, buildings, and cars.
If an arrow does not translate to English, you may be looking at Wingdings 3, which uses arrows for its entire alphabet.
3. Mobile Emoji Overrides
When pasting Wingdings onto iPhones or Android devices, system keyboards sometimes replace monochrome symbols with bright colored emojis (such as turning the skull ☠︎ into an emoji skull 💀). Our Wingdings Translator handles these emoji variants automatically.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Can Google Translate decode Wingdings?
No. Google Translate is designed exclusively for natural human languages (like Spanish, Japanese, or Arabic). It does not recognize dingbat fonts or symbol substitution sets. You must use a specialized tool like Wingdings Translator.
Is Wingdings an encrypted secret language?
No. While it looks like a cypher, it is simply a graphical font set where letters are swapped with pictograms. It provides zero cryptographic security, making it purely decorative and fun for casual puzzles.
How do I decode Wingdings on an iPhone or Android phone?
Simply copy the symbols on your phone, open Safari or Chrome, head over to Wingdings Translator, paste the symbols into the input box, and read the English translation instantly.
Summary
Decoding Wingdings is quick and effortless once you have the right tool:
- For copyable text: Use our free Wingdings Translator.
- For screenshots and photos: Upload your file to our Wingdings Translator from Image.
- For Word documents: Switch the font back to Arial or Calibri.
Bookmark our decoder tools so you can effortlessly uncover any secret Wingdings message you encounter across the web!