Travel & Places · Emoji 0.6
🌈Rainbow Emoji
Generally, the 🌈 emoji just means “rainbow.” It’s used to express something beautiful, colorful, or joyful.
The 🌈 emoji represents a rainbow.
- Unicode
- U+1F308
- Released
- 2010
- Shortcode
- :rainbow:
- Skin tones
- No
01 — Meaning
What does the 🌈 Rainbow emoji mean?
People search for it under a lot of different names. All of these point at the same character.
People also look for it as gay emoji, pride emoji, lgbtq emoji, lesbian emoji.
02 — Platforms
Rainbow emoji on iPhone, Android, WhatsApp and X
The character is always U+1F308 — but every vendor draws it their own way. This is what your rainbow looks like to the person on the other side.
See the whole set the way each system draws it — iPhone emojis, Android emojis, WhatsApp emojis and Discord emojis.
03 — Copy & codes
Rainbow emoji copy and paste
Tap any value to copy it. The emoji itself works everywhere, the escapes are for your code, and the shortcode Slack and Discord expect is :rainbow:.
All emoji copy and paste →In your code
Pick the notation your language wants. They all resolve to the rainbow, code point U+1F308.
04 — How to type
How to type the 🌈 Rainbow emoji
Where the emoji key lives on each system — and the codes for when there is no picker at all.
05 — Download
Rainbow emoji PNG and SVG
Transparent PNG and SVG for thumbnails, decks and design files — one file per vendor, which makes 9. Artwork belongs to whoever drew it, so check the licence before commercial use.
Emoji PNG library →
Apple
Google
Twitter / X
Facebook
06 — Combinations
Rainbow emoji combinations
Ready-made combos built around rainbow for bios, captions and comments. Tap to copy.
All combinations →Want two emojis fused into one sticker instead of set side by side? Emoji Kitchen does that with 🌈, and there are more ready-made pairs in emoji combinations and aesthetic emoji combos.
08 — In conversation
What 🌈 means from a girl or a guy
Who sent the rainbow and what came before it change the reading more than the emoji itself does.
09 — Apps
What 🌈 means on TikTok, WhatsApp and Discord
The character is the same everywhere, but the artwork and the reading of it change from app to app.
11 — Difference
🌈 vs 🏳️🌈 — what is the difference?
Two emojis that get mixed up constantly. They are different characters with different names.
Unicode name: Rainbow
Code: U+1F308 · added 2010
Shortcode: :rainbow:
Generally, the 🌈 emoji just means “rainbow.”
Unicode name: Rainbow Flag
Code: U+1F3F3 U+FE0F U+200D U+1F308 · added 2016
Shortcode: :rainbow-flag:
Usually, it just means someone is supporting the LGBTQ+ community.
12 — History
Where the 🌈 Rainbow emoji came from
This one is older than Unicode emoji: Japanese carriers were drawing it on their handsets years before the standard existed, which it finally joined in 2010.
Same character every time — U+1F308 never changed. Only the drawing did, and only because each vendor redraws its own set. Someone on an older phone still sees the older picture.
Long before Unicode had emoji, Japanese carriers shipped their own picture sets.
🌈 existed there as
KDDI au EAF2, SoftBank E44C.
Those codes are why it survived into the standard at all — Unicode had to keep Japanese messages readable.
Rainbow was approved as U+1F308 and shipped in Emoji 0.6 (2010). Emoji 0.6 is the original 2010 batch that came over from the Japanese sets.
Every vendor keeps its own artwork, so 🌈 is redrawn by Apple, Google, Twitter / X, Facebook, OpenMoji, Samsung, Microsoft, WhatsApp, JoyPixels. The character you send never changes — only the picture does.
13 — FAQ