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

&#xD83D;&#xDC48;&#xD83C;&#xDFFE;

Specifications

Vendor Google

Category People

Subcategory hand-single-finger

Unicode Version 6.0

Emoji Version 1.0

License Apache-2.0 / OFL-1.1

Google Noto License

Emoji graphics by Google. © Google Inc. Licensed under Apache License 2.0 and SIL Open Font License 1.1 where applicable.

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.

Apache 2.0 SIL OFL 1.1 Noto Repository