Pointing fingers and hand gestures, as plain text glyphs and as emoji.
26 symbols - click any symbol to copy
Last reviewed on October 31, 2026
The six characters from U+261A to U+261F are old-style pointing hands, known in printing as manicules. Black ones are filled and white ones are outlined. They are simple glyphs that take your text color and work well to flag a note or a line. ☝ and ✌ also have emoji versions that some phones show automatically.
Gesture emoji such as 👍 👋 👏 and 🙏 are color images that differ by platform. Many of them accept a skin tone modifier, which is a separate character from U+1F3FB to U+1F3FF placed right after the hand. Paste the plain yellow version here, then add a modifier in apps that offer it.
Gestures can be read differently by culture and platform. 🙏 is officially named folded hands and is used for thanks, hope or prayer, while 👌 and ✌ carry varied meanings. When tone matters, add a few words so the symbol is not the only message.
The text pointing hands are handy as callouts before a line of instruction, as in ☞ Click here to continue. On messaging apps, ☝ and ✌ may be swapped for their emoji form automatically, so the look of a pasted symbol can change after you send it.
☞ (U+261E) points right and ☜ (U+261C) points left, with ☝ pointing up. The black versions are ☛ and ☚.
Copy 👍 from this page. It is the emoji U+1F44D. There is no plain text version, so it always appears in color.
Add a skin tone modifier (U+1F3FB to U+1F3FF) right after the hand, or use your keyboard's emoji picker, which offers the tones on a long press.