Try Clapping Hands emoji
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Meaning & usage
What does the Clapping Hands emoji mean?
Applause and praise. The well done and bravo emoji.
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. The well done and bravo emoji. 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.
What does 👏 mean from a girl or from a guy?
The same thing either way: Applause and praise. The sender's gender does not change what the character means. What does change it is how well you know each other, what the rest of the message says, and whether either of you is being ironic.
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
- applausebravopraisewell done emojibravo emoji
Put it in a message
When 👏 is the right choice
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