Try Red Heart emoji
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Meaning & usage
What does the Red Heart emoji mean?
The classic symbol of love, in its most sincere form.
Direct, sincere affection. It is the most conventional heart for love and support, carrying more emotional weight than a decorative coloured heart.
How to use ❤️ naturally
Romance, family, gratitude — the safest heart to send.
Heart emoji express affection, support or enthusiasm, but colour and decoration change the intensity. The same heart can feel romantic with a partner and warmly platonic with a close friend.
From standard to slang
The history of ❤️
- 2010
First defined as emoji
According to Unicode’s Emoji Versions data, Red Heart 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
The stylised heart shape, which has not resembled the organ since medieval manuscripts settled on it. This is the oldest emoji here in symbol terms and the only one that needs a variation selector to show in colour.
- Today
How its use evolved
Romance, family, gratitude — the safest heart to send.
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.
I’m so proud of you ❤️
Thank you for always being there ❤️
Home safe. Love you ❤️
When to use it
Using ❤️ clearly
Romance, family, gratitude — the safest heart to send. It lands as love or heart 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 red heart emoji
What does ❤️ mean in a text message?
The classic symbol of love, in its most sincere form. Direct, sincere affection. It is the most conventional heart for love and support, carrying more emotional weight than a decorative coloured heart.
Is ❤️ always positive?
Not always. Its usual readings are love, heart, romance, and irony or the relationship between the people can flip any of them.
Why does ❤️ look different on another device?
U+2764 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 red heart 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 red heart 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.
Red Heart or Sparkling Heart?
💖 is excitable and decorative; ❤️ is plain and sincere. 💖 suits enthusiasm, ❤️ suits love.
Red Heart or Two Hearts?
💕 is lighter and cuter, which makes it comfortable between friends where ❤️ might feel too heavy.
Red Heart or Heart with Arrow?
💘 is about being struck by attraction. ❤️ is about the settled feeling that comes afterwards.
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+2764 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 | \2764 \FE0F | For the content property. Keep the quotes around the whole value. | |
| JavaScript | \u{2764}\u{FE0F} | A string-literal escape. Needs the u flag inside a regular expression. | |
| URL-encoded | %E2%9D%A4%EF%B8%8F | Percent-encoded UTF-8, for query strings and API requests. |
Reference card
Emoji details
- Unicode
- U+2764 U+FE0F
- Category
- Hearts & Love
- Also known as
- loveheartromance
Put it in a message
When ❤️ is the right choice
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