The pointing hand ☞
The pointing hand ☞ is officially the white right pointing index (U+261E), with siblings pointing left ☜, up ☝︎ and down ☟, and filled versions ☛ ☚. This shape is much older than computers: medieval and Renaissance readers drew little pointing hands, called manicules, in the margins of books to flag important passages, and printers later cast them as a piece of type known as the index or fist.
Today ☞ works as a bold bullet or pointer in plain text, like "☞ read this first" or "new video ☞ link in bio". The sideways and backhand versions such as 🖙 and 🖝 were added to Unicode much later and are less widely supported.
Hand emoji meanings
Some hand emoji have clear, widely shared meanings: 👍 means yes or approval, 👏 applause, 🙏 (folded hands) thank you, please or prayer, 🤞 fingers crossed for good luck, and 🤝 a deal or agreement. 🤟 is the "I love you" sign from American Sign Language, 🤘 is the rock-music sign of the horns, and 🫶 heart hands shows love or support.
Gestures do not mean the same thing in every culture, and in some countries a thumbs-up or an OK sign can come across as rude. If your audience is international, a word or a heart can be clearer than a hand. For thank-you messages, see the thank you symbol page, and for good-luck wishes, the good luck symbols.
Text hands vs emoji, and how to type them
Hands like ✌︎ ✍︎ ☝︎ ✋︎ ✊︎ can appear as flat text or as color emoji, depending on the device and app. Those, along with emoji hands like 👍 and 👋, support skin tones: on iPhone and Android, press and hold the emoji to pick one. The text pointers ☞ ☜ ☟ ☛ ☚ have no skin tones and stay one color.
On Windows, press Win + . and search "hand". On a Mac, press Control + Command + Space. In Microsoft Word, type 261E and press Alt + X for ☞. For more text faces like the ones above, browse the kaomoji page.