Beaming Face with Smiling Eyes Emoji
A wide grin showing teeth with the eyes squeezed shut, closer to delight than to a simple smile.
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Meaning & usage
What does the Beaming Face with Smiling Eyes emoji mean?
A wide grin showing teeth with the eyes squeezed shut, closer to delight than to a simple smile.
Delighted and a little bit pleased with itself. The closed eyes and visible teeth make it read as a reaction to something good rather than as a greeting.
How to use 😁 naturally
Celebrations, proud moments and slightly cheeky admissions.
Face emoji usually carry more tone than literal information. Read them alongside the words, the relationship between the people, and whether the conversation is playful, formal or tense.
From standard to slang
The history of 😁
- 2010
First defined as emoji
According to Unicode’s Emoji Versions data, Beaming Face with Smiling Eyes was first defined as emoji in Emoji 0.6, dated 2010. That label is retrospective: Unicode applied it later to the early mobile core it inherited from the Japanese carriers.
- Before the keyboard
Its visual roots
A wide grin showing the teeth, with the eyes shut by the force of it. The closed eyes push it past a greeting into a genuine reaction.
- Today
How its use evolved
Celebrations, proud moments and slightly cheeky admissions.
Dates follow Unicode’s official Emoji Versions chart. Versions before Emoji 1.0 are labelled retrospectively. See the history of emoji.
In conversation
Examples of 😁 in messages
These examples show the emoji in complete messages, where the words make its intended tone easier to read.
Passed, first attempt 😁
I may have bought two 😁
Front row seats 😁
When to use it
Using 😁 clearly
Celebrations, proud moments and slightly cheeky admissions. It lands as beaming face with smiling eyes or 😁 meaning when the rest of the message supports that reading, and it is the surrounding words that do the deciding — so in a sensitive, professional or cross-cultural conversation, say the thing outright as well.
Common questions
About the beaming face with smiling eyes emoji
What does 😁 mean in a text message?
A wide grin showing teeth with the eyes squeezed shut, closer to delight than to a simple smile. Delighted and a little bit pleased with itself. The closed eyes and visible teeth make it read as a reaction to something good rather than as a greeting.
Is 😁 always positive?
Not always. Its usual readings are beaming face with smiling eyes, 😁 meaning, grin emoji, and irony or the relationship between the people can flip any of them.
Why does 😁 look different on another device?
U+1F601 identifies the emoji; the picture is a font, drawn separately by Apple, Google, Microsoft and Samsung. Only the artwork changes, never the character.
How do I copy and paste the beaming face with smiling eyes emoji?
Use the copy button at the top of this page. 😁 is a character, not an image, so it pastes into messages, captions and filenames as ordinary text.
When was the beaming face with smiling eyes emoji introduced?
Unicode’s Emoji Versions data first records 😁 as emoji in Emoji 0.6, dated 2010. Early emoji version numbers can be retrospective, so this date describes its place in the standardised emoji set rather than the first-ever appearance of the underlying symbol.
Easily confused
😁 compared with similar emoji
These sit close enough in meaning that people reach for the wrong one. Here is what actually separates them.
Beaming Face with Smiling Eyes or Grinning Face with Smiling Eyes?
😄 keeps its eyes open and reads as a greeting. 😁 closes them and reads as a reaction to something good.
For developers
😁 in code
Every value below is generated from the character itself, so it stays correct even where a file encoding cannot hold the emoji directly.
| Format | Value | When to use it | Copy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode | U+1F601 | The standard reference. Use it to search a character map or a spec. | |
| HTML (hex) | 😁 | For HTML and XML. Safe in files that are not saved as UTF-8. | |
| HTML (decimal) | 😁 | The same reference in decimal. Both render identically. | |
| CSS | \1F601 | For the content property. Keep the quotes around the whole value. | |
| JavaScript | \u{1F601} | A string-literal escape. Needs the u flag inside a regular expression. | |
| URL-encoded | %F0%9F%98%81 | Percent-encoded UTF-8, for query strings and API requests. |
Reference card
Emoji details
- Unicode
- U+1F601
- Category
- Smileys & Emotion
- Also known as
- beaming face with smiling eyes😁 meaninggrin emoji
Put it in a message
When 😁 is the right choice
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