Try Clapping Hands emoji
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Meaning & usage
What does the Clapping Hands emoji mean?
Applause and praise.
Visible praise and applause. A single clap sequence celebrates someone; claps inserted between words create forceful emphasis and may sound confrontational.
How to use 👏 naturally
Between words it adds emphatic rhythm to a point.
Hand gestures can be direct and efficient, which makes them useful in quick replies. Their tone varies across cultures and age groups, so a short accompanying phrase can prevent ambiguity.
From standard to slang
The history of 👏
- 2010
First defined as emoji
According to Unicode’s Emoji Versions data, Clapping Hands 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
Two hands mid-clap with motion lines. The lines are what make it applause instead of two hands touching.
- Today
How its use evolved
Between words it adds emphatic rhythm to a point.
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.
You absolutely earned this 👏
What a performance 👏
Clear 👏 communication 👏 matters
When to use it
Using 👏 clearly
Between words it adds emphatic rhythm to a point. It lands as applause or bravo 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 clapping hands emoji
What does 👏 mean in a text message?
Applause and praise. Visible praise and applause. A single clap sequence celebrates someone; claps inserted between words create forceful emphasis and may sound confrontational.
Is 👏 always positive?
Not always. Its usual readings are applause, bravo, praise, and irony or the relationship between the people can flip any of them.
Why does 👏 look different on another device?
U+1F44F 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 clapping hands 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 clapping hands 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.
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+1F44F | 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 | \1F44F | For the content property. Keep the quotes around the whole value. | |
| JavaScript | \u{1F44F} | A string-literal escape. Needs the u flag inside a regular expression. | |
| URL-encoded | %F0%9F%91%8F | Percent-encoded UTF-8, for query strings and API requests. |
Reference card
Emoji details
- Unicode
- U+1F44F
- Category
- Hands & Gestures
- Also known as
- applausebravopraise
Put it in a message
When 👏 is the right choice
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