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A right-pointing triangle that starts playback.
Also known as: Play button, Right triangle, Start button
A triangle pointing right starts playback. The direction is not arbitrary: it follows the tape moving forward past the head on the reel-to-reel machines the controls were designed for.
Points right because the controls were designed for tape machines, where playback moved the tape forward — left to right in the standard diagram.
Reel-to-reel and cassette era onward · Contexts: Software
Points the way the tape used to travel, which is why it points right in almost every interface — including interfaces localised into right-to-left scripts, where it is one of the few elements that is deliberately not mirrored, because the direction refers to the medium rather than to reading order.
Contexts: Software, Electrical equipment
Related forms that are not treated as separate canonical symbols — see our variant rules.
Play/pause combined
The triangle drawn beside the two bars as a single control that toggles. Common on media keys and remote controls where one button does both jobs.
Triangle in a circle
The same triangle enclosed in a ring, used as an overlay on a video thumbnail rather than as a button in a transport bar.
A solid triangle with one point facing right and a flat vertical edge at the left.
Both belong to the standard set of media transport controls.