Detective Emoji
A figure in a hat and coat, for investigating, searching and snooping.
Try Detective emoji
Edit the text, then change the size.
Meaning & usage
What does the Detective emoji mean?
A figure in a hat and coat, for investigating, searching and snooping.
Curious and slightly comic. Most use is about looking something up rather than solving a crime.
How to use 🕵️ naturally
Research posts, looking something up and jokes about digging through an account.
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 🕵️
- 2014
First defined as emoji
According to Unicode’s Emoji Versions data, Detective was first defined as emoji in Emoji 0.7, dated 2014. Another retrospective label, covering characters recognised as emoji in 2014.
- Before the keyboard
Its visual roots
Added in 2014 in a trench coat and hat, modelled on the detective of old film posters. The magnifying glass 🔍 beside it covers the plainer version of the same idea.
- Today
How its use evolved
Research posts, looking something up and jokes about digging through an account.
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.
Three pages deep into their account 🕵️
Found the answer in a 2013 forum post 🕵️
Investigating who ate it 🕵️
When to use it
Using 🕵️ clearly
Research posts, looking something up and jokes about digging through an account. It lands as detective emoji 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 detective emoji
What does 🕵️ mean in a text message?
A figure in a hat and coat, for investigating, searching and snooping. Curious and slightly comic. Most use is about looking something up rather than solving a crime.
Is 🕵️ always positive?
Not always. Its usual readings are detective emoji, 🕵️ meaning, investigate emoji, and irony or the relationship between the people can flip any of them.
Why does 🕵️ look different on another device?
U+1F575 U+FE0F 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 detective 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 detective emoji introduced?
Unicode’s Emoji Versions data first records 🕵️ as emoji in Emoji 0.7, dated 2014. 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+1F575 U+FE0F | 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 | \1F575 \FE0F | For the content property. Keep the quotes around the whole value. | |
| JavaScript | \u{1F575}\u{FE0F} | A string-literal escape. Needs the u flag inside a regular expression. | |
| URL-encoded | %F0%9F%95%B5%EF%B8%8F | Percent-encoded UTF-8, for query strings and API requests. |
Reference card
Emoji details
- Unicode
- U+1F575 U+FE0F
- Category
- Smileys & Emotion
- Also known as
- detective emoji🕵️ meaninginvestigate emoji
Keep browsing