Smiley Face Symbol ☺ Copy and Paste

Tap ☺ to copy the classic outlined smiley as a plain text character. The filled ☻, the round ㋡, the katakana ツ and the 🙂 emoji are in the variants list. The table shows the two-digit Alt codes and the phone methods.

☺

WHITE SMILING FACE

U+263A · tap the symbol to copy

How to Type the Smiley Face Symbol

UnicodeU+263A WHITE SMILING FACE
HTML☺ (add ️ for the emoji look)
WindowsAlt + 1 (numeric keypad, legacy code page); Alt + 2 gives ☻; or type 263A then Alt + X in Word
MacControl + Command + Space, search "smiling"; the picker inserts the emoji form
iPhoneEmoji keyboard → search "smiling"; ☺️ appears with the yellow faces
AndroidGboard emoji search "smiling face"; ☺️ sits among the first faces
LaTeX\smiley (wasysym)

Smiley Face Symbol Variants and Lookalikes

Using the Smiley Face Symbol

The outlined smiley ☺ is one of the oldest pictures in computing. It sat at position 1 of the original IBM PC character set in 1981, next to its filled twin ☻ at position 2, which is why the two-digit Alt codes still work on Windows today. Unicode carried both into the Miscellaneous Symbols block as U+263A and U+263B in 1993, decades before the yellow emoji faces existed. The plain glyph is drawn in the current text colour, so it matches whatever is around it and reads as part of the sentence.

Text smiley versus emoji

Appending the variation selector U+FE0F yields ☺️, and here the platforms disagree more than usual: Apple shows a blushing, closed-eyed smile, Google and Samsung show a gentler grin, and Windows shows a simple outlined face. The separate slightly smiling face 🙂 at U+1F642 is a different character from 2014 with no text form at all. Online it has picked up a tone of polite restraint or quiet irritation, so if you want an unambiguous happy face, 😊 is safer and ☺ is the neutral old-school choice. Searching for ☺ will never find 🙂, because they are unrelated code points.

The katakana faces

Two Japanese letters do heavy duty as smileys. ツ (tu) has two eyes and an upturned stroke that looks like a grin, and it anchors the shrug kaomoji ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. ㋡ is the katakana sa inside a circle, which people read as a compact round face. Both are letters, not symbols, so a screen reader will announce them as Japanese text and a Japanese reader will see syllables rather than faces; that is fine for a bio but odd in a caption meant for a wide audience. The emoticons section covers the full kaomoji families built from them.

Placement and spacing

Treat the smiley as a word: put a space before it and, if it ends a sentence, place it after the full stop or replace the stop entirely. Two in a row look enthusiastic; five look like a broken keyboard. In a display name it works as a suffix, "Anna ☺", and in a handle it is rejected on most platforms because usernames stay in ASCII.

Rendering notes

Every desktop and mobile font includes ☺ and ☻, so they show on old phones, e-readers and forum software that predates emoji. Some messaging apps convert the bare character to the emoji automatically; if you want the plain look to stick, paste ☺︎ with the text-style selector U+FE0E instead. The ASCII :-) from 1982 remains the only smiley guaranteed to survive any system. For a gentle profile, combine ☺ with a rounded alphabet from the cute fonts generator or the soft ornaments on the aesthetic symbols page.

Smiley Face Symbol FAQ

What is the Alt code for a smiley face?

Alt + 1 types the outlined ☺ and Alt + 2 types the filled ☻. Hold Alt, press the digit on the numeric keypad and release. These are legacy codes from the original PC character set and work in most Windows programs.

Why does ☺ look different on iPhone and Android?

The emoji presentation ☺️ is drawn by each vendor in its own style. Apple gives it rosy cheeks and closed eyes, while Google and Samsung draw a plainer grin. The text form ☺ without the selector looks the same simple outline everywhere.

Is ☺ the same as 🙂?

No. ☺ is the white smiling face at U+263A, a text symbol from 1993 with an optional emoji look. 🙂 is the slightly smiling face at U+1F642, an emoji-only character added in 2014 that carries a more reserved tone.

What does ツ mean in usernames?

It is the Japanese katakana letter tu, used purely because it resembles a grinning face. It carries no meaning in the name beyond that, and Japanese readers see a syllable rather than a smile.

How do I type the smiley symbol on a Mac?

Press Control + Command + Space to open the character picker and search for "smiling"; the result inserts the emoji form ☺️. For the plain text glyph, copy it from this page or set up a text replacement.

How do I stop my phone turning ☺ into an emoji?

Paste the character with the text-style selector, ☺︎, which includes U+FE0E. Most apps respect it and keep the outlined glyph, though a few keyboards still swap in the coloured face.