What 🫲 means
Built to be half a handshake. 🫲 was made in 2021 with 🫱 so the handshake could show two skin tones instead of one for both. In the sequence the rightwards hand's shade stays right and the leftwards hand's shade stays left — flip the order and the tones swap sides. Solo, it still works as a plain left-pointing gesture: reach, offer, or send eyes left.
Don't confuse it with
1Combination ideas
1handshake with darker right hand, lighter left hand
Worth knowing
- 🫲 is a single code point, so it survives copying through almost anything — old databases, SMS gateways, printer drivers.
Questions people ask
1Why does 🫲 look different on other phones?
Every platform draws its own artwork for the same code point. The character you send is identical; Apple, Google, Samsung and WhatsApp each render it in their own style.
How to type 🫲
Windows
Win+.Open the emoji picker and search “leftwards hand”.
macOS
Control+Command+Spaceopens the character viewer.
iOS / Android
Emoji keyboard → search “leftwards hand”.
Chat apps
:leftwards_hand:the common shortcode; support varies by platform.HTML
🫲Custom handshake tones
Long-press 🤝, then pick the top row for the right hand and the bottom row for the left.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
🫲
HTML hex
🫲
CSS content
content: "\1FAF2";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%F0%9F%AB%B2
1
On screen
1
Code points
2
JS .length
4
UTF-8 bytes
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.