Miss You Emoji

Unicode has never added an emoji named "miss you", so people built the meaning out of what exists. The face that carries it best is 🥺 Pleading Face: big wet eyes, a little pout, "I miss you" said quietly. It arrived in 2018 and within a year had become the default face for longing, wanting and being touched. 🥹 Face Holding Back Tears is its older, more grown-up cousin: not crying yet, but close, the face for "I saw your photo and had a moment".

The crying faces say it louder. 😢 Crying Face with its single tear is honest, contained sadness; 😭 Loudly Crying Face is sobbing, often with a wink of exaggeration ("I MISS YOU 😭😭"). 😔 Pensive Face, eyes down and closed, is the one for quiet evenings when the missing is more a mood than a tear, and 😞 Disappointed Face fits a cancelled visit or a trip that ran long. 🥲 Smiling Face with Tear is bittersweet: happy you exist, sad you are far.

A few newer faces say what the old ones can't. 😮‍💨 Face Exhaling is a long sigh. 😶‍🌫️ Face in Clouds is being somewhere else in your head, and 🫥 Dotted Line Face is feeling faded or invisible without the person who notices you. 😿 the crying cat softens all of it, good for a friend rather than a partner. On the warm side, 😘 and 🥰 turn "I miss you" into "I miss you and I love you", and 🤗 is a hug sent across the distance.

Miss you heart emoji: colours and what each one means

💔 Broken Heart is the plain statement: the distance hurts. ❤️‍🩹 Mending Heart, a heart with a bandage, is the healthier version, "it hurts but I'm holding on until you're back"; it is really ❤️ joined to the 🩹 bandage emoji, so very old phones show the two side by side. 💗 Growing Heart and 💓 Beating Heart say the feeling keeps getting bigger while you're apart, and 💕 Two Hearts stands for the two of you, close even when you aren't. ❣️ is a heart as an exclamation mark, "miss you!".

People search for the meaning of each heart colour, so here is the short version for missing someone. ❤️ red is love, full stop, the one to send a partner. 🤍 white is pure, calm and the heart people use for someone who has died, or for a love that is waiting patiently. 💙 blue is loyal and steady, the friend or family heart. 💜 purple is tender and a bit dreamy, popular between close friends. 🖤 black and 🩶 grey are for grief and heavy moods, and 🩷 pink is soft affection, a sweet "missing you" for someone new. Pick the colour that matches who they are to you, and the words will follow.

Emoji for missing someone far away: moon, rain and letters

The moon is the oldest long-distance emoji. 🌙 Crescent Moon in a message means "it's night here and I'm thinking of you", and the moon faces 🌛 🌜 and the 🌕 Full Moon add the same quiet note. The idea behind it is simple and much older than phones: wherever you both are, you look up at the same moon, which is why texting someone "look at the moon" has become its own way of saying "I miss you". ⭐ 🌟 🌠 a shooting star and 🌌 the Milky Way carry the wish that goes with it, and 🌃 or 🌇 set the scene: the city at night, the sunset you wish you were watching together.

Rainy weather is the other classic. 🌧️ Cloud with Rain and ☔ an umbrella in the rain mean the day feels grey without them; 🌦️ sun behind a rain cloud is the hopeful version. 💧 is a single tear, 🍂 a fallen leaf and 🍃 a leaf blown away are the autumn mood of someone who left, and 🌫️ fog is the haze of being half there. 💭 Thought Balloon is the most direct of all: put a face or a heart after it and it reads "thinking of you". 👤 a lone silhouette says "it's quiet here", 🪟 a window is waiting for someone to come home, 🧸 a teddy bear is the thing you hug instead, and 🖼️ 📷 📸 are the old photos you keep opening.

Then there is the message itself. 💌 Love Letter, ✉️ an envelope and 📩 📨 a letter on its way frame a long text as something written just for them; 📬 the mailbox with the flag up means "you've got mail" and 📮 is the postbox you dropped it in. 📱 📞 ☎️ ask for the thing emoji can't replace: "call me, I miss your voice". ✈️ 🛫 🛬 and 🧳 are the trip that separates or reunites you, 🗺️ 🌍 📍 mark how far apart you are, 🛣️ 🛤️ are the long road between, and ⏳ ⌛ 🕰️ 📅 📆 count the days until it ends. 🏠 says the only thing that matters: come home.

Missing someone who passed away

A lot of people looking for a miss you emoji are missing someone in heaven, and the set for that is gentle and mostly white. 🕊️ Dove is peace and the soul at rest, 👼 Baby Angel and 🪽 a wing stand for the person watching over you, 🕯️ a candle is the one you light for them, and 🤍 the white heart goes with all of them. 🌹 a rose or 💐 a bouquet is the flowers at the grave; 🥀 Wilted Flower is grief that has not faded yet. 🙏 folded hands are a prayer or simply "thinking of you" to the family.

On an anniversary or a birthday of someone gone, the most common combination is 🕊️🤍🕯️ or 👼💔, sometimes with ⭐ for "a star in the sky". These also work in a condolence message to a friend; the Condolence & RIP Emoji collection has the fuller set for that.

Miss you text symbols for bios and usernames

Where colour emoji don't fit, plain text symbols carry the same feeling. ♡ (a white heart suit) and ❥ are the hearts; ღ is the Georgian letter ghan, borrowed worldwide as a heart because of its shape, and ❦ is an old printers' floral heart. ∞ says forever, and ☾ ☽ are the text moons, in Unicode since 1993, long before any emoji moon existed. ☆ and ✧ are the stars people scatter in aesthetic captions, and ⌢ Frown is a minimal sad mouth for a text face.

Put them together and you get the classic bio lines: ☾ ♡ ∞, ✧ miss u ✧ or the plain old </3, which needs no special character at all. Kaomoji do the crying for you: (╥﹏╥) and (T_T) are the tear-streaked faces, and the Kaomoji Symbols collection has hundreds more.