Eject button

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The eject
symbol
Car radio with CD / MP3 player, with light blue illuminated eject button at the top right.
Camcorder with cassette (left) and open cassette compartment, the eject button can be seen on the far right of the open flap. After actuation, the flap is opened here by motor.
Eject button (bottom right) on a CD burner . The symbol is stamped into the plastic above the button.

The eject button or eject button is a button on an electronic device (or its remote control) that is used to eject a storage medium .

Eject buttons are typically found on car radios with cassette or CD parts, cassette recorders , video recorders , camcorders , streamers , CD-ROM drives , CD players , as well as DVD and Blu-ray Disc drives or playback devices. Because of their central function, they are often attached to easily recognizable, prominent positions on the device, e.g. B. near a corner of the front panel or directly next to or on the shaft, the drawer or the flap for the medium.

Also on computer keyboards sometimes finds an eject button ⏏. The symbol for this can be found in Unicode since version 4.0 U+23CF.

Characteristic

A distinction is made between mechanical , electronic or software-based eject buttons:

  • A mechanical eject button uses the force of the button actuation to eject the media that is in the device out of the device. This is used, for example, with 3.5-inch floppy disk drives . In some cases, the user presses the medium (invisibly) against a spring when it is inserted, thereby tensioning it. When the button is pressed, the spring then supplies the force for the acceleration / movement of the medium from the device. A similar mechanism is commonly used on cassette decks for the cassette compartment door.
  • An electronic eject button triggers the ejection process via a signal . For example, in CD-ROM drives with an electric motor, the drawer on which the CD is located is pushed out. The same button is usually used to retract this drawer. In the case of video devices or video cameras with magnetic tapes , the tape around which it was wrapped during playback is often first detached from the head drum before the medium is ejected .
  • A software-based eject button requires an electronic eject button. In contrast to this, you don't actually press a button, but rather initialize the ejection by operating software . You often have this option in burning programs (e.g. Nero Burning ROM ) or software music players (e.g. iTunes ). On Apple computers, this is also done by moving the CD symbol on the desktop desktop to the trash can symbol. Under Windows and most other interfaces, you can call up the context menu of the drive symbol and click "Eject".

Some devices do not have a drawer in which the storage medium is inserted. Here the medium is enclosed by a cartridge or inserted directly into the drive (so-called slot-in drives ). The eject button is only used here for ejection, not for retraction.

There is already an eject button on Apple keyboards , so it is often not used on the drive itself. B. the Apple iMac or Apple PowerMac . On some devices from other manufacturers, holding down the Stop button for a longer period also acts as the eject button.

The software can block the ejection of a disc by the computer . This is common, for example, with Unix operating systems and CD burning programs. A mounted ("mounted") data carrier cannot be ejected until it is removed from the file system.

The pictogram of an upward-pointing triangle with an underlying flat rectangle or bar, which was initially only used on cassette recorders , has found its way into all electronic devices. In Unicode , the symbol ⏏ (U + 23CF EJECT SYMBOL) is available for the pictogram.