Is 🫹 officially approved?

No. It's part of the Emoji 18.0 draft candidate set (targeted September 2026). The Unicode Technical Committee can still change or reject it before then.

What does 🫹 look like if it hasn't rendered yet?

A closed fist drawn in profile with the thumb extended horizontally to the left. The draft designs from vendors like Emojipedia show a skin-tone-matched hand, same base color as 👍 Thumbs Up.

Will 🫹 support skin tones?

The proposal requests skin tone modifiers, matching every other thumb and hand emoji. Final behavior depends on the ratified spec.

←🩸🫺→

🫹

Leftwards Thumb Emoji

Gestures & BodyU+1FAF9:leftwards_thumb:

thumbleftleftwardsgesturehandswipe

About Leftwards Thumb 🫹

Leftwards Thumb () is part of the Gestures & Body group in Unicode. Added in Unicode E18.0. Type on GitHub and Slack to use it. Click copy above to grab it, paste it anywhere.

Works in iMessage, WhatsApp, Discord, Slack, Instagram, Twitter, Gmail, and every app that supports Unicode.

Often associated with thumb, left, leftwards, and 3 more keywords.

Scroll down for the full story: meaning, trends, combos, and more.

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How it looks

What does it mean?

🫹 Leftwards Thumb Sign is a closed fist with the thumb pointing sideways to the left. Read as the spiritual sibling of 👍 Thumbs Up and 👎 Thumbs Down, but oriented horizontally rather than vertically. The draft proposal frames it with its partner 🫺 Rightwards Thumb as a dedicated gesture for "pointing," "swiping that way," or "sending it that direction."

In practice, expect 🫹 to fill a gap that 👈 Backhand Index Pointing Left has always handled awkwardly. A thumb reads as active consent ("yes, that way") while the index finger reads as instruction ("look at that"). The thumb variant is warmer, more gestural, and lands better in reply contexts. On iOS and Android's gesture-heavy UIs, "swipe left" becomes an actual visual shortcut.

Pointing left in conversation"Swipe left" / reject signalsDirections and wayfindingThumbs-based approval, sidewaysReaction to something on the left

Thumbs, four directions

If 🫹 and 🫺 ship in Emoji 18.0, the thumb-gesture emoji set will finally cover all four directions.

👍Up (2010)

Approval, agreement, like.

👎Down (2010)

Disapproval, disagreement, dislike.

🫹Left (2026?)

Sideways direction or swipe-left gesture.

🫺Right (2026?)

Sideways direction or swipe-right gesture.

Emoji combos

Origin story

Proposed to Unicode in 2025 (L2/25-252) as part of a directional gesture pair with 🫺 Rightwards Thumb. The proposal's core argument: modern phones turned swipe-left and swipe-right into universal UI gestures (Tinder, Gmail, every list-based app), and existing emoji only covers up/down approval. Adding horizontal thumbs gives the emoji set a full four-way gesture grid.

Often confused with

👈 points with the index finger (instruction). 🫹 points with the thumb (consent/agreement). Different social registers.

👈 Backhand Index Pointing Left

👈 points with the index finger (instruction). 🫹 points with the thumb (consent/agreement). Different social registers.

👍 is vertical approval. 🫹 is horizontal directional approval.

👍 Thumbs Up

👍 is vertical approval. 🫹 is horizontal directional approval.

Why add 🫹 when 👈 already exists?

👈 Backhand Index Pointing Left reads as "look at that" (pedagogical). 🫹 Leftwards Thumb reads as "yes, that direction" (consent or agreement with a direction). Different tone, different use cases. The proposal specifically targets swipe-left UI gestures and directional consent, which 👈 doesn't fit cleanly.

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