People & Body · Emoji 13.0
🥷Ninja Emoji
Generally, the ninja emoji means someone is being sneaky, cool, or skilled. It's often used in playful contexts to represent a hidden talent or action.
The 🥷 emoji represents a ninja outfit.
- Unicode
- U+1F977
- Released
- 2020
- Shortcode
- :ninja:
- Skin tones
- Yes
01 — Meaning
What does the 🥷 Ninja emoji mean?
One character, many names — these are the wordings people actually type, all 11 of them.
People also look for it as fight emoji, war emoji, hidden emoji.
02 — Platforms
Ninja emoji on iPhone, Android, WhatsApp and X
The character you send is always U+1F977. The picture is not: it is redrawn by each system, and the designs below number 9.
See the whole set the way each system draws it — iPhone emojis, Android emojis, WhatsApp emojis and Discord emojis.
03 — Skin tones
Ninja 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
Ninja emoji copy and paste
Everything here is the same character in different notation — including the shortcode chat apps know it by, :ninja:.
All emoji copy and paste →In your code
Different notation, one result: whichever escape you paste, what comes out is U+1F977.
05 — How to type
How to type the 🥷 Ninja emoji
No picker to hand? The ninja can be typed straight from the keyboard — the codes for that are below, one per system.
06 — Download
Ninja 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
Ninja emoji combinations
Ready-made combos built around ninja 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 for every pair Google has drawn, 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
Same emoji, different intent depending on who sent it and what came before.
09 — Around the world
What 🥷 means in other countries
Almost always used for “stealthy” or “sneaky” these days, fully detached from the historical role it’s based on.
common for “did that without anyone noticing,” a pure stealth-focused meaning
historical ninja were espionage agents rather than the all-black-costume assassins pop culture shows
doubles as lone-wolf-competence slang there, unrelated to actual historical ninjas
Before you send it: Works fine as playful stealth shorthand almost anywhere, no real need to overthink sending it.
10 — Apps
What 🥷 means on TikTok, WhatsApp and Discord
Chat apps do not change U+1F977, they change what it looks like and what people take it to mean.
12 — History
Where the 🥷 Ninja emoji came from
It arrived with the 13.0 release of the standard, which dates the ninja to 2020.
Same character every time — U+1F977 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.
Ninja was approved as U+1F977 and shipped in Emoji 13.0 (2020). 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.
13 — FAQ