Try Handshake emoji
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Meaning & usage
What does the Handshake emoji mean?
A deal, an agreement or a partnership.
Cooperative and professional. It represents an agreement, introduction or partnership and is less emotional than celebratory hand gestures.
How to use 🤝 naturally
Business announcements and settling plans.
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 🤝
- 2016
First defined as emoji
According to Unicode’s Emoji Versions data, Handshake was first defined as emoji in Emoji 3.0, dated 2016. Part of the rapid mid-decade expansion beyond the original mobile set.
- Before the keyboard
Its visual roots
Two hands clasped. Until 2022 it could not take skin tones, because the character encoded both hands as one unit and no mechanism existed for two.
- Today
How its use evolved
Business announcements and settling plans.
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.
Great working with you 🤝
We have a deal 🤝
Excited to announce our new partnership 🤝
When to use it
Using 🤝 clearly
Business announcements and settling plans. It lands as deal or agreement 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 handshake emoji
What does 🤝 mean in a text message?
A deal, an agreement or a partnership. Cooperative and professional. It represents an agreement, introduction or partnership and is less emotional than celebratory hand gestures.
Is 🤝 always positive?
Not always. Its usual readings are deal, agreement, partner, and irony or the relationship between the people can flip any of them.
Why does 🤝 look different on another device?
U+1F91D 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 handshake 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 handshake emoji introduced?
Unicode’s Emoji Versions data first records 🤝 as emoji in Emoji 3.0, dated 2016. 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+1F91D | 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 | \1F91D | For the content property. Keep the quotes around the whole value. | |
| JavaScript | \u{1F91D} | A string-literal escape. Needs the u flag inside a regular expression. | |
| URL-encoded | %F0%9F%A4%9D | Percent-encoded UTF-8, for query strings and API requests. |
Reference card
Emoji details
- Unicode
- U+1F91D
- Category
- Hands & Gestures
- Also known as
- dealagreementpartner
Put it in a message
When 🤝 is the right choice
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