Smiling Face With Heart-eyes Emoji
U+1F60D:heart_eyes:About Smiling Face With Heart-eyes π
Smiling Face With Heart-eyes () is part of the Smileys & Emotion group in Unicode. Added in Unicode E0.6. Type on GitHub and Slack to use it. On TikTok, type in comments to insert 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 143, bae, eye, and 11 more keywords.
Meaning varies across cultures, see cultural notes below.
Scroll down for the full story: meaning, trends, combos, and more.
How it looks
What does it mean?
Heart-shaped eyes on a grinning yellow face. It's the "I'm obsessed with this" emoji. You see something you love (a person, a meal, a sunset, a dog) and your eyes literally turn into hearts. The Unicode Consortium ranked it #3 globally in their 2019 frequency data at 4.2% of all emoji usage, behind only π at 9.9% and β€οΈ at 6.6%. Emojipedia describes the hearts as "bouncy and bubbly, dramatic, emphatic, and obvious, leaving no room for ambiguity." That's the key thing about π: there's no subtlety. When you send it, you're being loud about how much you love something. It works for romantic and non-romantic contexts, which is why it shows up everywhere from couple DMs to food Instagram.
One of the most versatile love emojis. You'll find it in Instagram comments (under selfies, food photos, travel content), in Twitter/X reactions, in DMs between partners, and in marketing copy. Nearly 50% of all Instagram comments contain emojis, and π is consistently one of the top five used in comments. Brands use it heavily because it's enthusiastic without being too intimate. It's safe for public-facing content in a way that π isn't. On Google's Gboard keyboard, π actually beats π in global usage, which surprised a lot of people since π feels more universal.
It means you love what you're seeing. Heart-shaped eyes convey enthusiastic admiration, infatuation, or adoration. Emojipedia describes the hearts as "bouncy and bubbly, dramatic, emphatic, and obvious." It works for people, food, places, animals, anything that triggers a "wow, I love this" reaction.
Both. The emoji reacts to what you're seeing, not who you're sending it to. π at a sunset is platonic. π at your crush's selfie is romantic. The target determines the tone, not the emoji itself. It's one of the safest love emojis for platonic use because it's more about admiration than intimacy.
The Unicode Consortium ranked it #3 globally in 2019 at 4.2% of all emoji usage. Only π and β€οΈ are used more. Apple shipped their version in 2008, two years before Unicode standardized it.
How π Lands: Almost Nobody Uses It Negatively
What it means from...
π from a crush is a strong positive signal. The heart-eyes make the romantic intent pretty obvious. If they send it in response to your photo or something you shared about yourself, they're telling you they're attracted. It's bolder than π₯° and less directed than π.
Standard couple usage. Reacting to photos, complimenting looks, expressing admiration. "You look amazing π" is one of the most common partner texts in existence. It stays enthusiastic even in long relationships, which is part of its charm.
Completely normal between friends. "Your new apartment π" or "This cake π" are platonic uses. The emoji reacts to something you see, not to a specific person. When directed at a friend's appearance ("you look stunning π"), it's a compliment without romantic undertones in most friend groups.
Safer than π since it's reactive rather than directed. "The new office space π" is fine. "You look great today π" to a coworker is riskier. Use it for things, not people, in professional contexts.
π on dating apps: what the data says
Flirty or friendly?
π is one of the few emojis that can be either without being confusing, because its meaning is determined by what it's directed at. π at a sunset = friendly. π at your selfie from your crush = flirty. The emoji itself is neutral in intent. It's the target that makes it romantic or platonic.
- β’π on your selfie from someone you're talking to? Flirty. They're telling you they find you attractive.
- β’π on a food photo? Not flirty, just hungry.
- β’π from someone who uses it on everyone's posts? Just their commenting style, don't read into it.
- β’π in a DM in response to something personal you shared? Stronger signal than a public comment.
Usually admiration or attraction. When a guy sends π in response to your photo, he's telling you he finds you attractive. If it's in response to food or content you shared, he's impressed. Guys use π less casually than some other emojis, so when it appears, it's usually intentional.
Women use π more broadly. It could be reacting to your appearance (romantic or platonic compliment), your content (food, travel, outfits), or just expressing excitement. Between women friends, π is a standard compliment emoji with no romantic undertones.
Which love emoji should I send?
| Scenario | Best pick | Why | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crush posts a selfie | π | You're reacting to what you see. Heart eyes are admiration from a distance β bold enough to signal interest, safe enough that you can claim you were just complimenting. | |
| Partner says goodnight | π | You're directing affection at them. A blown kiss is personal. Heart eyes would be weird here because there's nothing to "see." | |
| Friend shows you their new apartment | π or π₯° | π if you're excited about what you see. π₯° if you're happy for them. Both work. π would be strange. | |
| You feel content and loved | π₯° | Hearts floating around your face = you're basking in warmth. π is too reactive for a mood emoji. You're not looking at anything β you're just feeling good. | |
| Stranger's post you actually admire | π | Safe, clear, complimentary. β€οΈ works too, but π is more enthusiastic. π to a stranger is too intimate. |
Emoji combos
Origin story
The heart-eyes trope has deep roots in visual storytelling. The general convention of eyes morphing into symbols (hearts for love, dollars for greed, X marks for dazed) is what TV Tropes calls Wingding Eyes, and it goes back at least as far as the 15th-century Medieval Housebook manuscript. The specific heart-eye reaction got its mass-culture breakout in 1943 with Tex Avery's animated wolf in Red Hot Riding Hood, where the wolf's eyes literally popped out as hearts when he saw Red performing. The reaction was so explicit that the Production Code Administration ordered cuts. Avery later said a censor made him edit out footage of the wolf getting visibly aroused, and the original ending (which implied bestiality and mocked marriage) was removed entirely. Animator Preston Blair drew a replacement ending where the wolf's face peeled off as a mask, but MGM never used it. The whole short was initially banned from television for being too provocative, while uncut prints were sent overseas to entertain US troops. The censorship is a strange origin story for what would become the internet's most-used love emoji: π traces directly to a wolf cartoon the Hays Office tried to suppress.
Japanese manga and anime adopted the same visual shorthand independently. Bishie Sparkle and heart-eye reactions are shΕjo manga conventions with roots predating the postwar manga boom. The four-pointed sparkle and exaggerated eye style trace through Takabatake KashΕ's prewar girls'-magazine illustrations, which combined Western Art Nouveau with the bijinga tradition. By the time Tezuka Osamu was working in the 1950s, sparkly large eyes had become standard shΕjo grammar. Heart-eyes specifically became an anime running gag through characters like One Piece's Sanji (his visible eye literally turns into a heart when he sees a woman) and PokΓ©mon's Brock (heart-eyes for every Nurse Joy). When Japanese phone carriers designed their emoji sets, the heart-eyed face was the obvious shorthand for infatuation.
SoftBank shipped a version in their early carrier set, and Apple adopted a compatible design when they launched the iPhone in Japan in 2008 as a SoftBank exclusive. The Unicode encoding came via proposal L2/09-026 (filed January 2009 by Markus Scherer, Mark Davis, Kat Momoi, and Darick Tong from Google plus Yasuo Kida and Peter Edberg from Apple), the foundational document that brought the entire Japanese carrier set into the universal standard. Unicode 6.0 standardized it in October 2010 as SMILING FACE WITH HEART-SHAPED EYES. The official name stuck, though everyone just calls it "heart eyes."
Approved in Unicode 6.0 (2010) as SMILING FACE WITH HEART-SHAPED EYES. Added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. One of the original batch of standardized emoji. Apple introduced it in 2008 when entering the Japanese market via SoftBank, before Unicode standardization.
Design history
- 1943Tex Avery's Red Hot Riding Hood features the wolf's heart-shaped eyes reaction. The Production Code Administration orders cuts; the original ending is reanimated and the cartoon is initially banned from televisionβ
- 2008Apple includes π in their SoftBank-compatible emoji set for the Japanese iPhone launchβ
- 2009Proposal L2/09-026 (Scherer, Davis, Momoi, Tong from Google plus Kida and Edberg from Apple) submits π to the Unicode Consortium as part of the foundational Japanese carrier setβ
- 2010Unicode 6.0 standardizes it as U+1F60D SMILING FACE WITH HEART-SHAPED EYESβ
- 2015Formalized in Emoji 1.0
- 2017Google replaces blob-style π with round face design
- 2018π₯° (Smiling Face with Hearts) launches in Emoji 11.0, beginning the slow displacement of π from the gentle-affection registerβ
- 2019Unicode Consortium ranks it #3 most-used emoji globally at 4.2% usageβ
- 2025Gen Z trend pieces flag π as part of the millennial emoji set considered cringe alongside π and πβ
Around the world
The heart-eyes expression doesn't read the same everywhere. In Japan and Korea, π leans toward admiration and cuteness rather than romantic desire β it's closer to saying "that's adorable" than "I want to date you." Research on Eastern vs Western emoji perception found that East Asian cultures read emotion primarily through the eyes, while Western cultures read the whole face. Since π replaces the eyes entirely with hearts, it carries stronger weight in East Asian contexts where eyes are the emotional focal point. In Middle Eastern countries, expressing romantic feelings publicly is culturally sensitive, so π used in public-facing social media tends to be about admiration for places, food, or possessions rather than people. In Latin America and Southern Europe, π is used freely and enthusiastically for both people and things, with less concern about romantic implications. Americans sit somewhere in the middle: it's fine for everything from food to crushes, but sending it to a stranger's selfie reads differently than reacting to a friend's vacation photo.
The visual gag dates to Tex Avery's 1943 cartoon "Red Hot Riding Hood" where the wolf's eyes turned to hearts. It became a staple in both Western animation and Japanese manga/anime, eventually making its way into emoji via Japanese carrier designs.
Twice, memorably. In 2017, an Israeli court ruled that a text containing π π― βοΈ βοΈ πΏοΈ πΎ demonstrated intent to rent an apartment, awarding the landlord $2,200. In 2021, a wrong version of π exposed fabricated evidence in a US harassment case β the plaintiff's iPhone 5 couldn't display the iOS 13 version of π she claimed to have received.
Yes. In Japan and Korea, π leans toward admiration and cuteness rather than romantic desire. In Latin America, it's used freely for everything. In Middle Eastern countries, it tends to be directed at places and objects rather than people in public posts. Americans use it broadly for both romantic and platonic admiration.
The slow displacement: how π₯° took the gentle-affection register
Popularity ranking
Search interest
The Confusion Gap: Nobody Googles What π Means, but π₯° Confuses Everyone
Who Uses π? Age and Gender Breakdown
Gender Split: Who Expresses Love with Emojis?
83% of female emoji users express love with emojis vs 67% of male users, per Adobe's research. But here's the twist: a separate study found men actually use heart-related emojis (including π) MORE frequently than women in online communication. Women express love with emojis more often, but men reach for the heart-eyes specifically when they do. The likely reason: men have fewer love emojis in their regular rotation, so π carries more of the load.Where is it used?
Often confused with
The most common mix-up. π is excited and reactive ("OH WOW I love this!"). π₯° is calm and contented ("I feel so loved"). Emojipedia puts it well: π is "bouncy and bubbly" while π₯° is "glowing but gratified." Use π when you see something you love. Use π₯° when you're basking in love.
The most common mix-up. π is excited and reactive ("OH WOW I love this!"). π₯° is calm and contented ("I feel so loved"). Emojipedia puts it well: π is "bouncy and bubbly" while π₯° is "glowing but gratified." Use π when you see something you love. Use π₯° when you're basking in love.
Smiling cat with heart-eyes. The cat version of π. Used by people who prefer cat emoji for personality, or as a slightly quirkier, more playful alternative. Functionally identical in meaning.
Smiling cat with heart-eyes. The cat version of π. Used by people who prefer cat emoji for personality, or as a slightly quirkier, more playful alternative. Functionally identical in meaning.
π directs affection at someone (blowing a kiss). π reacts to something you're seeing. π says "I'm sending you love." π says "what I'm looking at is amazing." Google Gboard data shows π is actually more popular globally.
π directs affection at someone (blowing a kiss). π reacts to something you're seeing. π says "I'm sending you love." π says "what I'm looking at is amazing." Google Gboard data shows π is actually more popular globally.
π is excited admiration ("OMG I love this!"). π₯° is calm contentment ("I feel so loved"). A quick test: if you just saw something for the first time and your jaw dropped, that's π. If you're lying on the couch feeling warm and grateful, that's π₯°. Google Trends data shows "π₯° meaning" gets more searches because the name "smiling face with hearts" is vague β people know what heart-eyes means, but π₯° requires Googling.
π reacts to something ("I love what I see"). π directs affection at someone ("I'm sending you a kiss"). Here's the real test: you can send π about a pizza. You can't send π at a pizza. π requires a recipient β it's personal. π just needs an object of admiration. That's why π has only 22% workplace acceptance while π is safe for Slack.
The Love-Emoji Map: π Owns the Loud-Reactive Quadrant Alone
Do's and don'ts
- βUse it to react to photos, content, and things you find beautiful or amazing
- βSend it as a compliment to friends and partners
- βUse it in Instagram and social media comments freely
- βDirect it at things (food, views, outfits) more than at people in professional settings
- βSpam it under every post (it loses impact with overuse)
- βDirect it at a coworker's appearance in a work Slack
- βAssume it's always romantic, it's frequently used for non-romantic admiration
- βUse it sarcastically, the heart-eyes are too sincere for irony
Safer than π since it's reactive rather than directed. "The new design looks amazing π" is fine in most workplaces. "You look great today π" directed at a colleague is riskier. When in doubt, direct it at work products, not people.
The data says yes. Plenty of Fish found that messages containing π get a 41% response rate. A Match.com survey showed that single emoji users go on more dates (54%) than non-users (31%). One π at the right moment works. Five in a row reads desperate β 15% of users flag heavy emoji use in bios as a red flag.
Love Emoji Sentiment Scores: The Affection Hierarchy
Caption ideas
Aesthetic sets
Type it as text
Fun facts
- β’The Unicode Consortium ranked π #3 globally in 2019 at 4.2% of all emoji usage. Only π (9.9%) and β€οΈ (6.6%) were used more.
- β’The heart-eyes visual trope dates to Tex Avery's 1943 cartoon where the wolf's eyes turned to hearts. The gag became a staple of both Western animation and Japanese manga.
- β’Apple shipped their version of π in 2008 for the Japanese market, two years before Unicode officially standardized it in 2010.
- β’On Google's Gboard, π is actually more popular than π worldwide, even though π feels more universal.
- β’Instagram posts with emojis get 17% more engagement than those without, and π is consistently one of the top emojis in comments.
- β’π is the third most-used emoji in email subject lines behind the registered trademark symbol and the big-eyed smiley. Emails with emojis in the subject line see 56% higher open rates according to Experian, though click-through rates don't always follow.
- β’The Tex Avery wolf cartoon that established the heart-eyes trope was partially censored by the Hays Office. The Production Code Administration ordered cuts to the wolf's reactions, the original ending was scrapped for implying bestiality, and the short was banned from television for being too provocative. Uncut prints were sent overseas to entertain US troops during WWII.
- β’The Unicode encoding of π came via proposal L2/09-026, the foundational January 2009 document that brought the entire Japanese carrier emoji set into the universal standard. Authors: Markus Scherer, Mark Davis, Kat Momoi, and Darick Tong (Google) plus Yasuo Kida and Peter Edberg (Apple). Same proposal also gave us π, π, β€οΈ, and most of the original Unicode 6.0 emoji that you still use every day.
- β’Heart-eyes are an example of a wider anime/cartoon convention called Wingding Eyes, where eyes morph into symbols to show what's on a character's mind. Hearts mean love, dollars mean greed, X marks mean dazed, spirals mean dizzy. The convention dates back to at least the 15th-century Medieval Housebook manuscript, predating animation by 500 years.
- β’One Piece's Sanji and PokΓ©mon's Brock are the most famous walking π references in anime. Sanji's visible eye literally turns into a heart when he sees a woman, and Brock gets heart-eyes for every Nurse Joy he encounters. The emoji is essentially a screenshot of a manga reaction shot.
- β’π₯° launched in Emoji 11.0 (2018) under the official name SMILING FACE WITH SMILING EYES AND THREE HEARTS. Eight years later, it's still slowly stealing the gentle-affection register from π. The Google Trends crossover happened in early 2021, and by Q1 2026 the gap had widened to 89 vs 75 in π₯°'s favor.
Common misinterpretations
- β’Sending π under a coworker's photo can be read as attraction even if you meant it as a generic compliment. In professional contexts, use it for things (projects, designs, results) not people.
- β’Some people read π as more intense than intended. If you react to everything with π, it can feel like you're either constantly infatuated or not really paying attention.
In pop culture
- β’"Heart eyes" entered the English language as an adjective directly because of π. People say "I'm heart eyes over this" or "heart eyes emoji" as a spoken phrase. Emojipedia's Emojiology traced how the emoji's visual concept became a verbal expression, one of the rare cases of an emoji generating a new phrase rather than replacing one.
- β’The heart-eyes concept predates the emoji by decades: cartoon characters have had heart-shaped eyes since early Looney Tunes and anime. Pepe Le Pew, Brock from Pokemon, and Sanji from One Piece all feature the exact π expression as a visual shorthand for love or attraction.
- β’Instagram comment sections turned π into the default compliment. Under celebrity selfies, fashion posts, and food photography, strings of πππ function as applause. It's the most common single-emoji comment on Instagram after β€οΈ.
- β’On YouTube beauty and fashion channels, π appears in video titles and thumbnails as shorthand for "this product is amazing." Creators like James Charles, NikkieTutorials, and Jackie Aina use π in titles to signal approval, making it part of beauty content branding.
Trivia
For developers
- β’. One of the original Unicode 6.0 (2010) emoji. No variation selector needed.
- β’On Slack and Discord: . On GitHub: . Consistent across platforms.
- β’The cat variant π» is . Both were in the same Unicode 6.0 batch.
Apple shipped it in 2008 for the Japanese market. Unicode standardized it in 2010 as SMILING FACE WITH HEART-SHAPED EYES. It was formalized in Emoji 1.0 in 2015.
See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.
How do you use π?
Select all that apply
- Smiling Face with Heart-Eyes Emoji (Emojipedia)
- Emojiology: Smiling Face with Heart-Shaped Eyes (Emojipedia Blog)
- Blowing Kiss Beats Heart-Eyes in Google Stats (Emojipedia Blog)
- Unicode Emoji Frequency (Unicode Consortium)
- Face with Heart Eyes emoji (Wikipedia)
- Smiling Face With Heart-Shaped Eyes emoji (Dictionary.com)
- Red Hot Riding Hood (Wikipedia)
- Instagram emoji engagement study (MarketingProfs)
- Emojis prove intent (Israel case) (Quartz)
- RIP Blobs: Google Redesigns Emojis (Emojipedia Blog)
- Fabricated emoji evidence dismissed (eDiscovery Today)
- Best and worst emojis for dating app replies (Plenty of Fish)
- Emoji users date more (Match.com) (DatingAdvice.com)
- Gender differences in emoji usage (arXiv)
- Sender gender influences emoji interpretation (Frontiers in Psychology)
- Cultural differences in emoji perception (Pumble)
- Emojis & Dating Apps: Rizz, Romance, Icks (Emojipedia Blog)
- Unicode L2/09-026: Emoji Symbols Proposed for New Encoding (Unicode.org)
- Smiling Face with Hearts emoji (Emojipedia)
- Wingding Eyes (TV Tropes) (TV Tropes)
- Bishie Sparkle (TV Tropes) (TV Tropes)
- The Origins of the Shoujo Art Style (Karmiya Manga)
- How Gen Z Uses Emoji: A Guide For Millennials (Dictionary.com)
- Outdated emojis show your age (Destination Digital)
- Millennial vs Gen Z emoji meanings 2025 (Manorama)
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