👋Waving Hand Emoji
Generally, 👋 means “hello” or “goodbye. ” It’s a friendly way to acknowledge someone or let them know you’re aware of them.
The 👋 emoji is a waving hand.
- Unicode
- U+1F44B
- Released
- 2010
- Shortcode
- :wave:
- Skin tones
- Yes
What does the 👋 Waving Hand emoji mean?
One character, many names — these are the wordings people actually type, all 16 of them.
People also look for it as bye emoji, wave hand emoji, hand wave emoji, wave emoji, hand waving emoji, hello emoji.
Waving Hand emoji on iPhone, Android, WhatsApp and X
The character is always U+1F44B — but every vendor draws it their own way. This is what your waving hand looks like to the person on the other side.
iPhone, iPad, macOS
Android, Gmail, Chrome
X, Discord, Twemoji apps
Facebook, Messenger
Open-source, design systems
Galaxy, One UI
Windows, Teams, Fluent
WhatsApp on Android
Slack, Discord themes
See the whole set the way each system draws it — iPhone emojis, Android emojis, WhatsApp emojis and Discord emojis.
Waving Hand emoji skin tones
👋 supports all five Fitzpatrick skin tone modifiers. Each one is a separate character sequence — tap any to copy it.
Waving Hand emoji copy and paste
Everything here is the same character in different notation — including the shortcode chat apps know it by, :wave:.
In your code
Different notation, one result: whichever escape you paste, what comes out is U+1F44B.
How to type the 👋 Waving Hand emoji
Every system hides the emoji key somewhere else. Here is where, plus the raw codes for U+1F44B when there is no key at all.
Waving Hand emoji PNG and SVG
Grab the waving hand as transparent PNG or SVG. Each system ships its own drawing, and the licence stays with the vendor, all 9 of them.
Apple
Google
Twitter / X
Waving Hand emoji combinations
Ready-made combos built around waving hand for bios, captions and comments. Tap to copy.
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.
What 👋 means from a girl or a guy
Who sent the waving hand and what came before it change the reading more than the emoji itself does.
What 👋 means in other countries
A friendly greeting or goodbye almost everywhere, but sent alone mid-chat it can also mean “I’m done talking.”
A simple hello or farewell, with no hidden meaning attached to it at all.
Sent alone after a tense message, it can read as cutting the conversation short.
Before you send it: Fine to open or close a chat; avoid sending it solo right after someone raises an issue.
What 👋 means on TikTok, WhatsApp and Discord
One code point, several readings — where the waving hand lands changes how it is taken.
👋 vs 🤚 — what is the difference?
Two emojis that get mixed up constantly. They are different characters with different names.
Unicode name: Waving Hand
Code: U+1F44B · added 2010
Shortcode: :wave:
Generally, 👋 means “hello” or “goodbye.
Unicode name: Raised Back of Hand
Code: U+1F91A · added 2016
Shortcode: :raised_back_of_hand:
Generally, 🤚 means “stop” or “wait.
Where the 👋 Waving Hand 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+1F44B 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
NTT DoCoMo E695, KDDI au EAD6, SoftBank E41E.
Those codes are why it survived into the standard at all — Unicode had to keep Japanese messages readable.
Waving Hand was approved as U+1F44B 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.