Heart Hands Emoji

Two hands forming a heart shape. The gesture existed long before the emoji. Taylor Swift told The New York Times in 2011 that "the heart-hand symbol means something between 'I love you' and 'thank you,'" and she'd been doing it since she was a sophomore in high school in Nashville around 2005. The NYT christened her the "queen of hand heart." In South Korea, the finger heart gesture was popularized by K-pop idols in the 2010s as a compact way to show love to fans. The emoji captures the whole-hand version and was approved in Unicode 14.0 (2021) via proposal L2/20-211 by René Joythe, arriving on phones in early 2022. It immediately became one of the most popular new emojis, finishing second at the 2022 World Emoji Awards behind 🥹 Face Holding Back Tears and ahead of 🫠 Melting Face, and was later listed by Emojipedia as one of the six most popular new emojis added since the site's founding. Dictionary.com defines it as expressing love, care, support, or appreciation. It's sometimes called the "millennial hand heart" to distinguish it from Gen Z's preferred 🫰 finger heart.

🫶 fills a gap that heart emojis alone couldn't cover. Where ❤️ is abstract, 🫶 is physical. It says "I'm making this gesture at you" rather than "here's a symbol." On Instagram and TikTok, it's used in comment sections to express wholesome support, react to heartwarming content, and show appreciation for creators. In group chats, it's the go-to for "love you" without the intensity of a colored heart. It works for friends, family, partners, and even casual acquaintances because it carries warmth without romantic pressure. K-pop fans use it alongside 🫰 (finger heart) to show idol love. Taylor Swift fans use it as a callback to her signature gesture. In professional contexts, it's surprisingly acceptable: "Thanks for the help 🫶" in Slack reads as warm and sincere without being inappropriate. It supports five skin tone variations, promoting inclusion.

The hand heart gesture has two distinct cultural lineages that converged in one emoji.

In the West, Taylor Swift is the most prominent popularizer. She started making the gesture as a high school sophomore in Nashville around 2005 and told The New York Times that it means "something between 'I love you' and 'thank you'" and is "a sweet, simple message that you can deliver without saying a word." The NYT named her the "queen of hand heart" in 2011. Other celebrities adopted it. Google even patented the heart-shaped hand gesture for Google Glass in 2013 (Swift presumably didn't need to worry).

In South Korea, the finger heart gesture (using index finger and thumb rather than whole hands) has a messier origin. A 1993 TV appearance by singer Kim Ji-hoon has been identified as the earliest documented instance; G-Dragon appears making the gesture in a 1995 childhood photo. Actress Kim Hye-soo is credited with popularizing it in 2010, and Nam Woo-hyun of Infinite introduced it into the K-pop repertoire in 2011. From there it spread to EXO, BTS, BLACKPINK and essentially every idol group; BTS's Jimin is widely cited as one of the most prolific finger-heart appearances on Western stages from 2015 onward.

The gesture went fully global in a handful of documented moments. At the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, The North Face supplied volunteer gloves with highlighted thumb-and-index sleeves so athletes could flash the finger heart in the cold. In September 2018, Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un posed with finger hearts atop Mount Paektu, an image that spread internationally as a symbol of inter-Korean rapprochement. On May 31, 2022, BTS visited the White House to meet President Biden on anti-Asian hate crime, and the commemorative photo shows every member making a finger heart next to the president. The Korean version (🫰, also approved in Unicode 14.0) is "simpler, quicker to achieve and requires a lot less energy," making it more casual than the whole-hand heart.

Unicode approved both 🫶 Heart Hands and 🫰 Hand with Index Finger and Thumb Crossed in Unicode 14.0 (2021), giving both traditions their own emoji. 🫶 finished second at the 2022 World Emoji Awards, behind 🥹 and ahead of 🫠.

Taylor Swift's Eras Tour (2023-2024) locked in the Western version. She reportedly did not make heart hands on opening night of the tour, then saw fan edits of her old Fearless Tour hand hearts and added the gesture back during "Fearless" from night two onward. It became one of the most photographed moments of the tour and one of the most-shared 🫶-captioned clips on TikTok. Travis Kelce flashed it after a touchdown during the 2023 Chiefs-Jets game, and the gesture crossed into NFL broadcasts.

Approved in Unicode 14.0 (2021) as U+1FAF6U+1FAF6 HEART HANDS. Added to Emoji 14.0 in 2021 and became available on major platforms in early 2022. Supports five skin tone modifiers. Part of the same Unicode 14.0 batch as 🫠 Melting Face, 🥹 Face Holding Back Tears, 🫡 Saluting Face, and 🫰 Finger Heart. The gesture predates digital culture by decades, with Taylor Swift popularizing it in Western pop culture since ~2005.

• 🇰🇷
  2010: Kim Hye-soo seeds the finger heart: South Korean actress Kim Hye-soo is widely credited with [first popularizing the thumb-and-finger heart gesture in 2010](https://www.cathaypacific.com/cx/en_US/inspiration/travel/brief-history-korean-finger-hearts.html). Earlier instances exist (G-Dragon childhood photos) but Kim's variant became the photogenic, camera-friendly version that Korean fans copied.
• 🎤
  2011: K-pop adopts it: Infinite's Nam Woohyun brought the finger heart into the K-pop fan-greeting vocabulary in 2011. Within five years, BTS, EXO, PSY, G-Dragon, and Twice had locked it in as the default idol-to-fan signal. By the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics, [non-Korean athletes were copying it on the medal stand](https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/sports/team-usa-finger-heart-olympics/2080507/).
• 🎤
  2005: Taylor Swift's two-hand heart: On the parallel American track, Taylor Swift adopted the [two-hand heart gesture during her early Country tour in 2005-2006](https://www.lemon8-app.com/swifties4u/7330589380002710021), tied specifically to the song 'Fearless' and the lucky number 13. Swifties drew the heart on their hands at concerts, and the gesture became one of the most-photographed elements of every Eras Tour stop two decades later.
• 🤟
  Earlier: ASL 'I love you': Both gesture threads borrow from the [American Sign Language 'I love you' sign](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_love_you_(handshape)), itself a 1970s combination of the ASL letters I, L, and Y. Hellen Keller used a related thumb-and-finger sign in the early 20th century. The K-pop finger heart and the Western whole-hand heart are visual cousins of the same sign-language root.
• 📝
  2020: L2/20-211 proposal: [René Joythe's Unicode proposal](https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2020/20211-hand-heart-emoji.pdf) explicitly names both lineages: K-pop's finger heart and Western artists' two-hand heart. The committee approved it within a year, the K-pop version (🪰 Finger Heart) shipping alongside it in the same Emoji 14.0 batch. Rare to see two emoji ship for variants of the same gesture, but the Korean and Western forms had each accumulated enough cultural weight to demand their own glyph.

• •The Unicode proposal for 🫶 is L2/20-211, submitted by René Joythe in 2020. It's one of the shorter successful proposals in the UTC register, partly because the gesture was already so widely recognized that the author didn't need to argue for legibility.
• •🫶 finished 6th on Emojipedia's list of the most popular new emojis added since the site's founding in a 2023 retrospective. Every emoji ranked above it had shipped at least four years earlier.
• •Google patented the heart-shaped hand gesture in 2013 for Google Glass. SPIN noted that Taylor Swift, who'd been doing the gesture for years, "shouldn't worry."
• •🫶 finished second at the 2022 World Emoji Awards, behind 🥹 Face Holding Back Tears and ahead of 🫠 Melting Face.
• •The Korean finger heart was popularized in the 1990s and spread globally through the Korean Wave. It uses only the index finger and thumb, making it quicker and more casual than the whole-hand heart.
• •Travis Kelce adopted Taylor Swift's heart hands gesture after scoring touchdowns, bringing the gesture to NFL audiences.
• •The earliest documented Korean finger heart isn't from K-pop at all: it's a 1993 television appearance by singer Kim Ji-hoon, cited in Wikipedia's finger heart entry. Actress Kim Hye-soo popularized it in 2010, and Nam Woo-hyun of Infinite brought it into K-pop in 2011.
• •At the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, The North Face designed volunteer gloves with highlighted thumb and index finger sleeves so athletes could flash the finger heart in the cold. A corporate sponsor designing gloves around a hand gesture is rare.
• •In September 2018, South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un posed making finger hearts on top of Mount Paektu, a sacred mountain on the China-North Korea border. The photo became one of the most recognizable inter-Korean images of the decade.
• •In June 2022, BTS visited the White House to meet President Biden about anti-Asian hate crime. The group photo shows every member plus Biden making finger hearts. Few international state visits produce a hand-gesture meme.
• •According to fan-compiled Eras Tour footage, Taylor Swift skipped the hand heart on the opening night of the tour, then saw fan edits of her old Fearless Tour gestures and added it back starting night two. It became one of the most-shared 🫶-tagged moments of the tour.

• •Some people read 🫶 as romantic when it's often platonic. The gesture is used freely between friends, especially in fan communities. Don't overinterpret it from someone who sends it to everyone.
• •Because it supports skin tone modifiers, sending the default yellow version vs a specific skin tone can carry different connotations. Most people use the default for universal appeal.

• •🫶 (Heart Hands) was one of the most requested emojis before Unicode 14.0 (2021). The gesture has been a K-pop concert staple, with BTS, BLACKPINK, and other groups using it for fan interaction.
• •Taylor Swift popularized the heart hands gesture at Eras Tour concerts (2023-2024), making it one of the most photographed gestures of the decade. Fans captioned photos with 🫶, driving its usage spike.
• •At the 2018 inter-Korean summit, Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un posed with finger hearts atop Mount Paektu. A pop-culture gesture showed up in the most geopolitically sensitive photo op of the decade.
• •BTS's June 2022 visit to the White House ended with a group finger-heart photo that included President Biden. It was the first time a sitting US president publicly made a K-pop fan gesture on camera.
• •The 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics were the first Olympics where a hand gesture got its own designed merchandise: The North Face volunteer gloves highlighted the thumb-index sleeves to make finger hearts more visible on TV.