Pink Heart Emoji Meaning, and Which Pink Heart Is Which
Someone sent you a pink heart, but which one? The pink heart emoji meaning is warm either way: love, friendship and feelings of warmth, plus anything pink. The catch is that the plain pink heart only joined Unicode in 2022. Before that, any pink heart on your screen was a different emoji drawn in pink, and those older hearts carry their own shades of meaning.
For every other colour, start at heart emoji meanings, part of our emoji meanings dictionary.
Table of Contents
- Pink heart emoji meaning: love, friendship and warmth
- Which pink heart do you mean?
- Why did the plain pink heart only arrive in 2022?
- Can everyone see the pink heart emoji?
- Which hearts go with the pink heart?
- Frequently Asked Questions
Pink heart emoji meaning: love, friendship and warmth
Emojipedia describes the plain pink heart as a heart for love, friendship, feelings of warmth and the colour pink, one it expected to be used alongside other hearts. Its proposers had liking and cuteness in mind too: the keywords they suggested for it were “pink”, “like”, “cute”, “love” and “heart”.
U+1FA77 · Emoji 15.0, 2022 - Shows love, friendship and warmth.
- Used for liking or cuteness, and for things that are pink.
- Often used alongside other coloured hearts.
Which pink heart do you mean?
Only one heart is named pink: the plain pink heart from 2022. Five older hearts from 2010, shown below, have no colour in their names, but Emojipedia notes that several platforms draw them in pink (its list also includes the heart with arrow and the heart with ribbon). Each has its own meaning.
| Emoji | Name | Code point(s) | Emoji version (year) | Common meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🩷 | pink heart | U+1FA77 | Emoji 15.0 2022 | Shows love, friendship and warmth. |
| 💕 | two hearts | U+1F495 | E0.6 (Unicode 6.0) 2010 | Expresses love, affection or happiness, a "love is in the air" feeling. |
| 💗 | growing heart | U+1F497 | E0.6 (Unicode 6.0) 2010 | Shows love, joy, affection or pride that feels like it is swelling. |
| 💖 | sparkling heart | U+1F496 | E0.6 (Unicode 6.0) 2010 | Shows love and affection with a happy, playful or sweet tone. |
| 💓 | beating heart | U+1F493 | E0.6 (Unicode 6.0) 2010 | A more intense version of the red heart, showing passionate love, excitement or adoration. |
| 💞 | revolving hearts | U+1F49E | E0.6 (Unicode 6.0) 2010 | Expresses a heightened, giddy feeling of love, affection or joy. |
Characters, names, code points and versions from Unicode's emoji-test.txt (Emoji 18.0) and the Emoji Versions table in Unicode Technical Standard #51, checked . The year is when Unicode first defined the emoji, not when phones added it: vendors roll new emoji out later, at different times. E0.6 and E0.7 are Unicode's labels for emoji added in Unicode 6.0 (2010) and Unicode 7.0 (2014), before Emoji 1.0 was released in 2015. Emoji show in your device's own font, so they look different on other phones and computers. Meanings paraphrased from Emojipedia and Dictionary.com Emoji Dictionary, checked ; meanings vary by person and context.
Even the red heart has been pink. Unicode’s pink heart proposal notes that the original emoji sets of KDDI and SoftBank, two Japanese phone carriers, used pink hearts to tell the red heart apart from the red heart suit, and that as recently as 2017, Android 7.0 drew the red heart in pink before Google switched it to red. So a “pink heart” in an older message could be almost any of these, depending on the phone showing it.
Why did the plain pink heart only arrive in 2022?
Demand came long before the emoji: Emojipedia notes that a plain pink heart was one of the most requested emoji for years. The formal proposal, Unicode document L2/21-203 by Jennifer Daniel and Lauren Gawne, is dated 20 January 2020 and was last updated in April 2021. Unicode then approved the heart in Unicode 15.0 in 2022, together with the light blue and grey hearts.
| Emoji | Name | Code point(s) | Emoji version (year) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🩷 | pink heart | U+1FA77 | Emoji 15.0 2022 |
| 🩵 | light blue heart | U+1FA75 | Emoji 15.0 2022 |
| 🩶 | grey heart | U+1FA76 | Emoji 15.0 2022 |
Characters, names, code points and versions from Unicode's emoji-test.txt (Emoji 18.0) and the Emoji Versions table in Unicode Technical Standard #51, checked . The year is when Unicode first defined the emoji, not when phones added it: vendors roll new emoji out later, at different times. Emoji show in your device's own font, so they look different on other phones and computers.
The proposal listed the jobs a pink heart could do: national and regional colours (it names Newfoundland among regions with pink in their flags), identity flags that use pink, such as the bisexual and pansexual flags, and decoration, because coloured hearts are often strung together. Those were expected uses, not a record of how people use it now. It also argued that coloured hearts work as building blocks for ideas Unicode hasn’t encoded, and noted that pink is one of the 11 basic colours named across languages, so a pink heart brought the set closer to that full range. Checked against Unicode's emoji-test.txt (Emoji 18.0), Emojipedia and Unicode proposal L2/21-203 (Pink Heart)
Can everyone see the pink heart emoji?
Not necessarily. The year 2022 is when Unicode defined the pink heart, not when phones got it: vendors roll new emoji out later, at different times, and an older device without that update may not show it. Where it does show, each device draws it in its own design, so it can look different from phone to phone. The five older hearts in the table above have been in Unicode since 2010, so devices have had far longer to add them.
Which hearts go with the pink heart?
Other hearts, mostly. Emojipedia expected the pink heart to be used alongside other hearts, and its proposal pointed to the same habit of stringing coloured hearts together. Two sets to copy:
Mind the neighbours’ meanings when you mix colours: the green heart can hint at envy, and the white heart is commonly used when someone has died. The orange heart is another colour often used in a row with others. For the words around your hearts, browse cute Instagram captions, try the free Instagram caption generator, or draft your next caption in Outfeed AI.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the pink heart emoji romantic?
It can be, but it doesn’t have to be. Emojipedia describes the plain pink heart as a heart for love, friendship and feelings of warmth, and for the colour pink. That range means it works between friends as well as partners, so the sender and the context decide.
Does the pink heart mean something different from a guy or a girl?
No source we checked documents a gender-specific meaning for the pink heart. Emojipedia also warns that lists of secret heart-colour codes circulating online are not fixed: colour may add tone or emphasis, but it rarely encodes a hidden message. Read it from the person and the conversation, not from who sent it.
When was the pink heart emoji added?
Unicode approved the plain pink heart in Unicode 15.0 and Emoji 15.0, both released in 2022, together with the light blue and grey hearts. That is when Unicode defined it; phone makers added it to their keyboards later, at different times.
What is the difference between the pink heart and the two hearts emoji?
The pink heart is a single plain heart added in 2022, and it is the only heart whose Unicode name says pink. Two hearts dates from 2010 and is used for a ‘love is in the air’ feeling, for friends and family as well as partners. Emojipedia notes that several platforms draw it in pink, so the two are easy to mix up.