Face with Tears of Joy Emoji
Laughing so hard that tears appear — the internet's shorthand for 'that's hilarious'.
Try Face with Tears of Joy emoji
Edit the text, then change the size.
Meaning & usage
What does the Face with Tears of Joy emoji mean?
Laughing so hard that tears appear — the internet's shorthand for 'that's hilarious'.
Loudly amused and informal. It says that something is genuinely funny, although younger audiences may sometimes choose 💀 or 😭 for the same reaction.
How to use 😂 naturally
Reactions to jokes and memes. Repeat it for stronger emphasis.
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, Face with Tears of Joy 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
Laughter strong enough to leak out of the eyes, a manga convention for emotion overflowing. The mouth stays wide open, which is what separates these tears from crying.
- Today
How its use evolved
Reactions to jokes and memes. Repeat it for stronger emphasis.
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.
That typo changed the whole sentence 😂
I cannot believe you actually did that 😂
The dog’s reaction at the end 😂
When to use it
Using 😂 clearly
Reactions to jokes and memes. Repeat it for stronger emphasis. It lands as lol or laugh 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 face with tears of joy emoji
What does 😂 mean in a text message?
Laughing so hard that tears appear — the internet's shorthand for 'that's hilarious'. Loudly amused and informal. It says that something is genuinely funny, although younger audiences may sometimes choose 💀 or 😭 for the same reaction.
Is 😂 always positive?
Not always. Its usual readings are lol, laugh, crying laughing, and irony or the relationship between the people can flip any of them.
Why does 😂 look different on another device?
U+1F602 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 face with tears of joy 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 face with tears of joy 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.
Face with Tears of Joy or Rolling on the Floor Laughing?
Both are laughing, but 🤣 is the louder one. 😂 fits a good joke; 🤣 claims you actually lost composure.
Face with Tears of Joy or Skull?
💀 says the same thing to a younger audience — “I'm dead” — and carries none of 😂's reputation for being the emoji your parents use.
Face with Tears of Joy or Loudly Crying Face?
😭 covers laughing and genuine distress. 😂 only ever means amusement, so it is the clearer of the two when there is any doubt.
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+1F602 | 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 | \1F602 | For the content property. Keep the quotes around the whole value. | |
| JavaScript | \u{1F602} | A string-literal escape. Needs the u flag inside a regular expression. | |
| URL-encoded | %F0%9F%98%82 | Percent-encoded UTF-8, for query strings and API requests. |
Reference card
Emoji details
- Unicode
- U+1F602
- Category
- Smileys & Emotion
- Also known as
- lollaughcrying laughingfunny
Put it in a message
When 😂 is the right choice
Keep browsing