Backhand index pointing left: medium-dark skin tone Emoji
People
A cartoonish hand seen from the back, with the index finger extended horizontally to the left. The skin tone is rendered in a medium-dark shade to provide representational diversity in digital communication.
Usage Context
This emoji acts as a directional pointer, often used to draw the reader's attention to text, a link, or another image placed to the left of the message. It is a digital equivalent of a finger pointing at a specific item on a screen. It is frequently paired with 👈 to emphasize a point or used alongside 👇 to direct someone toward a specific comment or reply.
History
Pointing hand gestures were foundational elements of early web design, dating back to the 'hand' cursor icon used in early graphical user interfaces to signify a clickable link. This specific backhand version was integrated into the Unicode standard to provide a clear, non-verbal way to navigate multi-column layouts and inline text flows. Skin tone variations were later added in 2015 to allow for greater user personalization.
Details
Glyph
👈🏾
Unicode
U+1F448 U+1F3FE
Shortcode
:emoji_u1f448_1f3fe:
HTML Entity
����
Specifications
Vendor Google
Category People
Subcategory hand-single-finger
Unicode Version 6.0
Emoji Version 1.0
License CC-BY 4.0
Google Noto License
Emoji graphics by Twitter/X, licensed under CC-BY 4.0
Noto Color Emoji graphics are copyrighted by Google Inc. and licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. Font files may also be subject to the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1.
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