People & Body · Emoji 3.0
🤷Person Shrugging Emoji
Generally, 🤷 means "I don’t know" or "whatever." It’s used to show you’re not invested in a topic or you simply don’t have an answer.
Also searched as shrugged emoji.
The 🤷 emoji, also known as the “person shrugging,” shows someone who doesn’t know or care about something.
- Unicode
- U+1F937
- Released
- 2016
- Shortcode
- :shrug:
- Skin tones
- Yes
- Popularity
- #19 most used
01 — Meaning
What does the 🤷 Person Shrugging emoji mean?
People search for it under a lot of different names. All of these point at the same character.
02 — Platforms
Person Shrugging emoji on iPhone, Android, WhatsApp and X
Vendors keep repainting this one. Counting the archived versions further down, the person shrugging has been drawn in 3 ways.
See the whole set the way each system draws it — iPhone emojis, Android emojis, WhatsApp emojis and Discord emojis.
03 — Skin tones
Person Shrugging emoji skin tones
🤷 supports all five Fitzpatrick skin tone modifiers. Each one is a separate character sequence — tap any to copy it.
04 — Copy & codes
Person Shrugging 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 :shrug:.
All emoji copy and paste →In your code
Escapes for the languages people actually paste this into. Every one of them produces the same character, and that character is U+1F937.
05 — How to type
How to type the 🤷 Person Shrugging emoji
Every system hides the emoji key somewhere else. Here is where, plus the raw codes for U+1F937 when there is no key at all.
06 — Download
Person Shrugging 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
Microsoft
WhatsApp
07 — Combinations
Person Shrugging emoji combinations
Ready-made combos built around person shrugging 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.
09 — In conversation
What 🤷 means from a girl or a guy
Who sent the person shrugging and what came before it change the reading more than the emoji itself does.
10 — Around the world
What 🤷 means in other countries
Same shrug meaning as the gendered variants — uncertainty, indifference, or a plain “who knows”.
Reads consistently as “I don’t know” across regions and platforms.
Might come across as too casual if you’re expected to give a definite answer.
Before you send it: Good default for uncertainty; use words instead if the situation needs a firm answer.
11 — Apps
What 🤷 means on TikTok, WhatsApp and Discord
Chat apps do not change U+1F937, they change what it looks like and what people take it to mean.
13 — Difference
🤷 vs 🧏 — what is the difference?
Two emojis that get mixed up constantly. They are different characters with different names.
Unicode name: Person Shrugging
Code: U+1F937 · added 2016
Shortcode: :shrug:
Generally, 🤷 means "I don’t know" or "whatever."
Unicode name: Deaf Person
Code: U+1F9CF · added 2019
Shortcode: :deaf_person:
Generally, the 🧏 emoji means a deaf person or someone who has difficulty hearing.
14 — History
Where the 🤷 Person Shrugging emoji came from
Approved as part of Emoji 3.0, the person shrugging has been on phones for years now — counting from its release, 10.
Same character every time — U+1F937 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.
Person Shrugging was approved as U+1F937 and shipped in Emoji 3.0 (2016). Phones usually get new artwork about a year after approval, in a system update.
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.
15 — FAQ