Grinning Squinting Face

Q: Is 😆 annoyed or laughing?

Laughing. The squeezed eyes are a laugh squint, the same shape XD draws — not a wince. Annoyance has its own faces, like 😤 or 😑.

Q: Is 😆 outdated?

No. Many younger users have shifted to 💀 or 😭 for laughter, so 😆 can look a little plain next to them, but it still reads clearly as a laugh.

😆 is a big, open laugh: eyes squeezed shut, mouth wide — the XD emoji, basically. Sent alone, it usually means your joke landed; tacked onto a tease, it signals the tease is meant playfully. It laughs harder than but stops short of 's tears.

EmojiSince 2010

What 😆 means

A hearty laugh — the XD emoticon turned into a face. Tip XD upright and you get the same scrunched eyes and wide-open mouth. That squint is the tell: smiles, 😆 cracks up, cries laughing. It's the laughing emoji for a joke, a shared funny mishap, or news worth cheering.

Someone sent me 😆 — are they laughing at me?

Usually with you — check what it's replying to. As a solo reply to your joke, it's a reaction: what you said worked. Trailing their own jab — “nice haircut 😆” — it marks the jab as teasing and invites you to laugh along. The face can't guarantee kindness, though: when a group piles onto one person, the same laugh joins the pile-on. Read the conversation, not just the emoji.

Warm and casual with friends, group chats and relatives; the risk lies in what it's replying to.

Replying 😆 to someone's mishap or bad news reads as laughing at them.

Part of the collection

😂

Happy & Laughing Emoji

What it means when someone sends it to you

3 readings

It landed. They laughed at what you said.

Don't confuse it with

😂

Face With Tears Of Joy

😆 vs 😂: both laugh; 😂 adds tears for a harder laugh. Pick by intensity.

😅

Grinning Face With Sweat

Same grin plus a sweat drop, which turns it into relief or awkward laughter.

😄

Grinning Face With Smiling Eyes

Curved, open smiling eyes mean happiness; 😆's clamped-shut squint means laughter.

😝

Squinting Face With Tongue

😁

Beaming Face With Smiling Eyes

Teeth together and curved, smiling eyes: a beaming grin. 😆 opens its mouth wide and squeezes its eyes into > < marks.

Combination ideas

Full-volume cracking up.

Laughing at a funny message.

That joke landed perfectly.

Laughing at my own embarrassing moment.

Suggested: laughing and celebrating good news.

Worth knowing

Before Unicode, Japanese phone carriers had their own emoji sets. Unicode's 2010 table matches 😆 to DoCoMo's “happy face”, KDDI's “teretere” (bashful) and SoftBank's “ほっ” (a sigh of relief).