Fingerprint Emoji

🫆 Fingerprint is the ridged, whorled pad of a fingertip. Unicode approved it in Emoji 16.0 in September 2024 and Apple shipped it in iOS 18.4 on March 31, 2025. Samsung got there first, in One UI 7.0 on January 22, 2025.

Jennifer Daniel, chair of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee, pitched the symbol in three words: "identity (unique as you), security (as a passkey), and forensics." That's the whole value proposition. Nothing else on the keyboard covers unlocking a phone, leaving a trace, and being inimitably yourself in a single glyph. 👤 is anonymous. 🔓 is generic. 🫆 is both personal and traceable.

The emoji leans into that triple meaning immediately. On phones it's shorthand for biometric unlock. 70% of Americans use fingerprint scanning, making it the most common biometric on earth. In true-crime and detective content it signals evidence, clues, and the hunt. In identity and self-expression posts it's "leaving your mark," the one-of-a-kind signifier that 👥 and 🧬 don't quite carry. All three readings are alive from day one, which is rare for a brand-new emoji.

Three communities adopted 🫆 within weeks of the iOS 18.4 launch.

Tech and security. Passkey discussions, Touch ID threads, biometric login tutorials. When Apple's own documentation notes that the probability of a random fingerprint matching Touch ID is 1 in 50,000, the emoji became an instant stand-in for the whole authentication category.

True crime and forensics. TikTok's true-crime corner picked it up immediately for evidence reveals, cold-case threads, and detective content. Pair it with 🔍 and you've got a ready-made thumbnail.

Identity and aesthetics. The "leave your 🫆 on everything you create" register. "You leave a 🫆" replaced "you leave a mark" in a lot of reply-guy and self-help posts by mid-2025. It also showed up in the "Children of the Waning Star" TikTok trend, where users added 🫆 to bio fields as an in-group signifier.

There's also a running joke on X about the Google Noto design, which bakes a subtle question mark into the whorls. Design Twitter caught it within 24 hours of release and Emojipedia noted it in their changelog. Nobody agrees on whether it's intentional or a happy accident.

🫆 started as proposal L2/23-258, submitted to the Unicode Consortium in 2023 by Gianluca Fiumara and Valeria Ferraro. The argument was simple: fingerprints are one of the most visually recognizable symbols in modern life, with documented forensic use dating to around 1000 BC, and no existing emoji covered identity, biometric security, or forensic evidence cleanly.

The Unicode Technical Committee reviewed the proposal at UTC 177 in late 2023 and approved it for Emoji 16.0, the leanest batch in years with only eight new characters. Jennifer Daniel, chair of the Emoji Subcommittee, wrote on the Unicode blog that the fingerprint was chosen precisely because it does three jobs at once: identity, security, and forensics. The new ESC philosophy, she noted, favors linguistic flexibility over novelty.

Samsung shipped first in One UI 7.0 on January 22, 2025. Apple followed in iOS 18.4 beta 2 in early March 2025, with public release on March 31. Google rolled it into Android 16. By Emojipedia's Most Popular New Emoji of 2025 ranking, 🫆 came in second, behind only 🫩.

Proposal L2/23-258 (2023) authored by Gianluca Fiumara and Valeria Ferraro. Reviewed at UTC 177. Approved for Unicode 16.0 / Emoji 16.0 in September 2024. Deployed on Samsung One UI 7.0 (January 2025), Apple iOS 18.4 (March 2025), Google Android 16, and rolled out across WhatsApp, Discord, and Microsoft platforms through 2025.

Added in Unicode 16.0 (September 2024) as U+1FAC6U+1FAC6 FINGERPRINT. Single codepoint in the Symbols and Pictographs Extended-A block. One of only eight emoji approved in Emoji 16.0, alongside 🫩 Face with Bags Under Eyes, 🪉 Harp, 🫟 Splatter, 🪏 Shovel, 🫚 Root Vegetable, 🪾 Leafless Tree, and the flag of Sark.

1. 2023Proposal L2/23-258 submitted by Gianluca Fiumara and Valeria Ferraro↗
2. 2023Jennifer Daniel publishes the ESC's rationale on the Unicode blog: identity, security, forensics↗
3. 2024Approved in Unicode 16.0 and Emoji 16.0, September 2024
4. 2025Samsung ships it in One UI 7.0 on January 22, the first major platform to support it↗
5. 2025Apple releases iOS 18.4 on March 31, bringing 🫆 to iPhones globally↗
6. 2025Crowned #2 in Emojipedia's Most Popular New Emoji of 2025, behind only 🫩↗

🫆 reads similarly across cultures, but the emotional weight shifts. In the United States and United Kingdom, the forensic association is strongest because decades of crime drama (CSI, Sherlock, Line of Duty) have cemented the fingerprint as a crime-scene icon. In tech-forward markets like South Korea and Japan, the biometric-unlock reading dominates, since fingerprint login rolled out earlier and more universally on Galaxy and local Android phones. In India, where Aadhaar biometric IDs cover over 1.3 billion people, 🫆 pulls double duty as shorthand for national identity itself, not just phone security. In parts of Europe, where biometric data collection has been politically contentious under GDPR, the emoji skews toward privacy-debate contexts more than celebration of convenience.

• •🫆 was proposed by Gianluca Fiumara and Valeria Ferraro in 2023. The proposal made the case that no existing emoji covered identity, biometric security, and forensics simultaneously. All three readings stuck.
• •Even identical twins have different fingerprints because the ridges form from random environmental pressures in the womb, not genetics alone. 🫆 is one of the few "truly unique" symbols on the keyboard.
• •Sir William Herschel began systematically collecting fingerprints for contract verification in colonial India in 1858. Francis Galton published the first classification system in 1892. The emoji represents a 166-year-old modern identification technology.
• •Apple's Touch ID puts the odds of a random fingerprint matching yours at 1 in 50,000, five times better than a 4-digit passcode at 1 in 10,000.
• •81% of smartphones have biometrics enabled, and fingerprint is the most popular method at 70% of US adoption. 🫆 represents a technology billions of people use every day.
• •Samsung beat Apple to shipping 🫆: One UI 7.0 on January 22, 2025 vs iOS 18.4 on March 31, 2025. A rare first-mover win for Samsung on an emoji rollout.
• •Google's Noto Color Emoji design has a subtle question mark baked into the fingerprint whorls. It went viral on design Twitter within a day of release and nobody has confirmed whether it's intentional.
• •🫆 ranked #2 in Emojipedia's Most Popular New Emoji of 2025, beaten only by 🫩 Face with Bags Under Eyes. It outperformed Harp, Splatter, and Shovel.
• •India's Aadhaar biometric database contains fingerprints for over 1.3 billion people, the largest biometric identity system in the world. 🫆 is functionally the emoji of Indian national identity.

• •Codepoint: U+1FAC6U+1FAC6. Single codepoint, no ZWJ sequence or variation selectors.
• •CLDR keywords: clue, fingerprint, forensics, identity, mystery, print, trace. Use these for emoji-picker search indexing.
• •Platform support: iOS 18.4+, Samsung One UI 7.0+, Android 16+. Older systems render a tofu box. Always provide fallback text for older audiences.
• •Shortcode: :fingerprint::fingerprint: works on Slack and Discord post-2025. Emojipedia has the canonical platform support matrix.
• •Screen readers announce "fingerprint," which is unambiguous. Good choice for accessibility-focused UI.

See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.