🦉Owl Emoji
Generally, the owl emoji means someone is being wise, observant, or a little mysterious. It’s often used to express a thoughtful or intelligent comment.
The owl emoji (🦉) represents wisdom and knowledge.
- Unicode
- U+1F989
- Released
- 2016
- Shortcode
- :owl:
- Skin tones
- No
What does the 🦉 Owl emoji mean?
One character, many names — these are the wordings people actually type, all 4 of them.
Owl emoji on iPhone, Android, WhatsApp and X
Same code on both ends, different drawing on each screen — here is the owl as 9 vendors ship it.
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.
Owl 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 :owl:.
In your code
Pick the notation your language wants. They all resolve to the owl, code point U+1F989.
How to type the 🦉 Owl emoji
Where the emoji key lives on each system — and the codes for when there is no picker at all.
Owl emoji PNG and SVG
Grab the owl 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
Owl emoji combinations
Ready-made combos built around owl 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 owl and what came before it change the reading more than the emoji itself does.
What 🦉 means in other countries
A wisdom symbol in the West, but an omen of death or bad luck in parts of India, West Africa, and the Middle East.
Associated with wisdom and studiousness, from Athena’s owl onward.
Widely seen as a bad omen, sometimes linked to misfortune or death.
Associated with witchcraft or sorcery in some folk traditions.
Before you send it: Fine for ‘night owl’ jokes in the West; skip it as a compliment with contacts from these regions.
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.
🦉 vs 🍜 — what is the difference?
Two emojis that get mixed up constantly. They are different characters with different names.
Unicode name: Owl
Code: U+1F989 · added 2016
Shortcode: :owl:
Generally, the owl emoji means someone is being wise, observant, or a little mysterious.
Unicode name: Steaming Bowl
Code: U+1F35C · added 2010
Shortcode: :ramen:
Basically, it just means noodles!
Where the 🦉 Owl emoji came from
It arrived with the 3.0 release of the standard, which dates the owl to 2016.
Same character every time — U+1F989 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.
Owl was approved as U+1F989 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.