Yellow Emoji

💛 Yellow heart is the warm, non-romantic heart. It says I like you, I care, thank you, you made my day, without the weight that ❤️ carries. That is why it became the classic best-friend heart and why a yellow heart from a girl or a guy usually means friendship, cheerfulness and support rather than a crush. Between people who are dating it still works, as a soft, sunny version of love, but if you want to be unmistakably romantic, red or 🩷 does that job better.

On Snapchat the yellow heart has a fixed meaning: it appears next to a name when you are each other's number one best friend, the person you both send the most snaps to. Keep that up for two weeks and it turns into ❤️, after two months into 💕. On WhatsApp, Instagram and in texts it has no official meaning; the warm-friendship reading is simply how people use it. 💛 was one of the original coloured hearts of Unicode 6.0 in 2010, long before 🟡 and 🟨 existed.

Two combinations carry extra meaning. 💙💛 are the colours of Ukraine's flag and have stood for solidarity with the country since 2022; 💚💛 reads as Brazil or Jamaica, and 🖤💛 as a bee, a wasp or a sports team in black and yellow. The full set of hearts, with every colour explained, is in the Heart Emoji & Symbols collection.

Yellow shapes, sun, stars and moons

🟡 Yellow circle and 🟨 yellow square are the plain colour swatches. They arrived in Unicode 12.0 in 2019, when the full set of coloured circles and squares was added so that every basic colour had a neutral dot. People use 🟡 as a bullet point, a status light between 🟢 and 🔴 (in progress, pending, caution), as a bio divider in a yellow aesthetic, and as a stand-in for things that have no emoji of their own, like a yellow flag or a yellow belt.

The sun is the biggest source of yellow on the keyboard: ☀️ sun, 🌞 sun with face, the sun peeking out in ⛅ and 🌤️, and the glowing skies of 🌅 sunrise and 🌄 sunrise over mountains. Stars are yellow too: ⭐ is the flat medium star, 🌟 glowing star adds rays, ✨ sparkles is three small gold stars and ⚡ high voltage is a yellow bolt. The Sun Emoji & Symbols and Star Symbols & Sparkle Emoji collections go deeper into each of them.

The moon turns yellow once it is full. 🌕 full moon and the grinning 🌝 full moon face are drawn in gold on most keyboards, as are 🌛 and 🌜, the two quarter moons with faces, and the slim 🌙 crescent moon. A yellow moon in a message is usually just good night or a pretty sky; 🌝 with its sideways look is the cheeky, knowing one and 🌚 (dark, not yellow) its sly twin.

Yellow things: nature, food and the street

In nature the yellows are 🌻 sunflower, 🌼 blossom (a yellow daisy-like flower, the one people reach for when they want a yellow rose, which does not exist as an emoji), 🏵️ rosette, the golden 🌾 sheaf of rice, and the animals 🐝 honeybee, 🐣 🐤 🐥 the three chicks, 🦁 lion and 🦒 giraffe. On the plate: 🍋 lemon, 🍌 banana, 🍍 pineapple, 🥭 mango, 🌽 corn, 🧀 cheese, 🧈 butter, 🥐 croissant, 🍟 fries, 🍯 honey, 🍮 custard and a golden 🍺 beer. 🧀 came in 2015 and 🧈 only in 2020, so a very old phone may show them as boxes.

On the street yellow means look out. 🚕 taxi and 🚖 oncoming taxi are New York yellow cabs (the city has required its medallion taxis to be yellow since 1967), 🚌 bus is a yellow school bus on most keyboards, and 🚧 construction, ⚠️ warning, 🚸 children crossing, the 🦺 safety vest and the 👷 construction worker's hard hat are all caution yellow. Around the house and the classroom there are the 💡 light bulb, 🧽 sponge, 🧹 broom, the yellow ✏️ pencil, the yellow 📒 ledger notebook, the 🎗️ reminder ribbon, and two yellow balls, 🎾 tennis and 🥎 softball.

Gold counts as yellow on a screen. 👑 crown, 🏆 trophy, 🥇 first place medal, 🏅 sports medal, 🪙 coin, 💰 money bag and 🔑 key are the prize-and-riches set, and the brass 🔔 bell, 🛎️ bellhop bell, 🎺 trumpet and 🎷 saxophone complete it. Platform colours differ: Apple's 🚌 is more orange, Samsung's 🌝 is paler, and 🏵️ swings between yellow and orange, so check how a combo looks on the phone you are sending to.

Why emoji are yellow: the smileys and the yellow emoji guy

The faces 😀 😃 😄 😁 😂 🙂 😊 😉 are yellow because the smiley was yellow before emoji existed. Harvey Ball drew the first one in 1963 for an insurance company in Worcester, Massachusetts: a yellow disc, two dots and a curve. The Japanese carriers that invented emoji in the late 1990s kept the colour, and every platform since has followed, so a yellow circle with a smile is now readable as a face anywhere in the world.

The yellow emoji guy people search for is the person emoji with no skin tone chosen: 🤷 person shrugging, 🤦 person facepalming, 🙋 person raising hand, and the hands 👍 👋 👉 👆 👌 ✌️ 🙏 👏 🙌. Skin tone modifiers were added in Unicode 8.0 in 2015; without one, Unicode asks vendors to draw a generic, non-human colour, and they all chose the smiley yellow. He has no name. Each is simply Person Shrugging, Thumbs Up and so on, which is also why the "yellow emoji guy" is often a Simpsons joke.

Is it OK to use the yellow default? Yes. It is meant as the neutral choice and most people use it as one, for the same reason they use 😊 rather than a photo of themselves. Pick a skin tone when you want the emoji to be you; keep yellow when you mean anyone. The full face set lives in the Happy & Laughing Emoji collection and the hands in Hand Emoji.

Yellow aesthetic combos and when yellow means something

A yellow aesthetic post is built from the soft yellows: 🌻 🌼 💛 🍋 🐝 🍯 ✨ 🌾 🧈, three or four at a time, often with a white or cream break between them (🤍 ☁️ 🕊️). The bright, saturated set 🟡 🟨 ⭐ ⚡ 🚕 reads louder and more graphic, good for headers, status lines and sports posts. The combos below are ready to copy; swap one emoji for another from the same group and they still hold together.

The "traditional" and "desi" yellow combos people look for are for the haldi, the turmeric ceremony held a day or two before an Indian wedding, where the couple is painted with turmeric paste and everyone dresses in yellow: 🌼 💛 🌻 ✨ with 👰 🤵 or 🪔 does the job. Yellow is also the colour of Vasant Panchami, the spring festival of Saraswati, and of a yellow ribbon 🎗️ worn for someone who is away and awaited, a custom the 1973 song Tie a Yellow Ribbon made famous.

In sport, yellow is the leader and the warning at once: the 🟡 or 🟨 yellow jersey has marked the Tour de France leader since 1919, and the 🟨 yellow card has cautioned footballers since the 1970 World Cup. In China, yellow was the imperial colour, reserved for the emperor's robes and roof tiles, so 💛 👑 🟡 sit well together in any post about Chinese history or the Chinese New Year Emoji.