Dingbats and signs · U+2665

Heart symbol

The plain text heart. Older than the emoji and still the one that works in usernames.

Looking for the colour emoji instead? ❤️ Red Heart — same idea, drawn as a picture by each platform.

How to type it
Unicode
U+2665
Alt code
Alt+9829
HTML
♥
Unicode name
Black Heart Suit
Your font
01 — Origin

Where the Heart symbol comes from

The heart here is a playing-card suit, not a romantic invention. It comes from the French deck standardised in the fifteenth century, where hearts replaced the cups of older Italian and Spanish packs, and it entered Unicode in 1993 as one of the four suits — nearly two decades before ❤️ arrived as an emoji.

This is the heart that survives where emojis do not: usernames, filenames, page titles, terminal output and anything rendered in a single colour. Discord and Steam names accept it; most systems that strip emojis leave it alone because it is ordinary text.

Worth knowing
There are two hearts in this block — ♥ filled and ♡ hollow. The hollow one is not a separate “empty heart” emoji, it is the same suit drawn as an outline.
02 — Codes

Heart symbol codes

Four notations, one result: whatever you copy here comes out as U+2665.

03 — How to type

How to type ♥ on any keyboard

Keyboard, code, markup or document — the route to U+2665 differs by tool.

Windows
Hold Alt and type 9829 on the numeric keypad, then release. Without a keypad, use the Character Map app (search “charmap”).
Mac
Press Control + Command + Space to open the character viewer, then search “heart”. Double-click to insert.
Phone
There is no shortcut on a phone keyboard. Tap the symbol at the top of this page, then long-press in any text field and choose Paste.
Web and code
In HTML write ♥ or ♥. In CSS content: "\2665". Make sure the page is served as UTF-8 and the raw character works too.
04 — Font support

Will ♥ actually show up?

We checked 147 fonts installed on a normal machine and counted how many of them contain this character. A symbol missing from a font is drawn as an empty box — the text is still correct, it just cannot be drawn.

76% 111 of 147 fonts

Safe in most places. Common fonts have it. Older or decorative fonts sometimes do not, so a fallback font will kick in.

05 — Similar

Symbols people confuse with ♥

These look alike but are different characters — different codes, different fonts, sometimes different meaning.

07 — Same block

Dingbats and signs

Stars, snowflakes, scissors, checkmarks — the printer’s ornament set.

All dingbats and signs →
08 — FAQ

Heart symbol — questions

How do I type the Heart symbol?
On Windows hold Alt and type 9829 on the numeric keypad. On Mac open the character viewer with Control + Command + Space and search “Heart”. Or just tap the symbol on this page — it goes straight to your clipboard.
What is the HTML code for ♥?
Write it as ♥ or ♥ in HTML, \2665 in CSS content, and \u2665 in JavaScript. All four produce the same character.
Is ♥ an emoji?
No. ♥ is a text character — it takes the colour of the text around it and works in usernames, filenames and documents. An emoji is replaced by a colour picture and is sometimes stripped by forms and systems.
Why does ♥ show as a box on some devices?
Because that font has no drawing for this character. We checked 147 fonts on a normal machine and 111 of them include it. The character itself is always correct; only the drawing is missing.