Which heart symbol should you use?
The heart you see most often is ❤︎, officially HEAVY BLACK HEART (U+2764). It started as a black dingbat, but phones and most apps now draw it as the red heart emoji. If you want a heart that stays plain text and takes the color of your words, use ♥︎ (BLACK HEART SUIT) or the outline ♡ (WHITE HEART SUIT), the hearts from a deck of playing cards.
The other text hearts are decorative. ❥ is a rotated heart bullet, ❣︎ adds an exclamation-mark stem, and ❦ ❧ ☙ are floral hearts, versions of the hedera leaf that printers have used as an ornament for centuries. ღ is not a heart at all: it is the Georgian letter ghan, borrowed for its heart-like curl. For the hollow style in more detail, see the heart outline symbol page.
What the heart colors usually mean
Heart colors have no official meaning, but people tend to read them the same way. ❤︎ is romantic love, 🩷 and 💗 feel sweet and playful, 🧡 and 💛 are warm and friendly, 💚 often stands for nature or health, 💙 for loyalty and calm, and 🖤 for dark humor, grief or a goth look. 🤍 is soft, pure or supportive; read more on the white heart symbol page.
💜 has extra weight in K-pop fandoms, where it stands for "I purple you" (see BTS symbols). 💔 is heartbreak, ❤️🩹 is a mending heart for recovery, and ❤️🔥 is burning passion.
The colors arrived over time: 🖤 in 2016, 🧡 in 2017, 🤍 and 🤎 in 2019, and 🩷 🩵 🩶 in 2022. Phones that have not been updated show the newest ones as empty boxes.
How to type a heart
On Windows, hold Alt and type 3 on the number pad to get ♥︎. For emoji hearts, press Win + . (period) to open the emoji panel and type "heart". On a Mac, press Control + Command + Space to open the Character Viewer and search for "heart". On iPhone and Android, open the emoji keyboard and search "heart".
In Microsoft Word, type 2665 and press Alt + X for ♥︎, or 2661 for ♡. In HTML, ♥ gives ♥︎. Some chat apps also turn a typed <3 into an emoji heart automatically.
Hearts in bios and names
On Instagram and TikTok, hearts go in your name or bio, not your username, which only accepts letters, numbers, periods and underscores. A small heart such as ♡ or ₊˚⊹♡ beside your name looks cleaner than a row of emoji. Pair it with script letters from the cursive text generator for a soft look.