Dark Skin Tone Emoji

The 🏿 Dark Skin Tone emoji is a modifier (Fitzpatrick Type-6) that changes the skin color of a compatible people or body emoji to a deep brown shade. On its own it appears as a dark brown square, but paired with a person or hand emoji it creates a dark-skinned version of that emoji.

What Does the Dark Skin Tone Emoji Mean?

The Dark Skin Tone emoji is a modifier character that tells a supported emoji to display with the darkest of the five skin tone options in Unicode.

Its official Unicode name is EMOJI MODIFIER FITZPATRICK TYPE-6, and its codepoint is U+1F3FF. The name refers to the Fitzpatrick scale, a dermatological classification system for skin types. Unicode borrowed the scale's two ends and middle ground to define five modifiers, and Type-6 is the deepest of them.

Unlike a face or an object, this character is not designed to carry a mood or a message by itself. Its meaning is functional: it lets a person choose a skin tone that reflects their own appearance or the person they want to depict. That is why it belongs to the People & Body category, alongside hands, gestures, and people emojis.

If you want to browse the full group of related characters, the People & Body emoji category lists the emojis that can accept this modifier.

How Does the Dark Skin Tone Modifier Actually Work?

The modifier works by sitting directly after a compatible emoji in a text sequence, and your device then merges the two into a single image with a darker skin tone.

Technically, the base emoji comes first and the modifier follows. For example, the thumbs up emoji followed by U+1F3FF renders as a thumbs up with dark brown skin on supporting platforms. You do not see two separate symbols because the operating system's emoji font treats the pair as one unit.

This is called an emoji modifier sequence. It was introduced so that Unicode did not need to define dozens of separate characters for every skin color of every person emoji. Instead, one modifier can be applied to many base emojis.

• Base emoji: a person, hand, or body part emoji that supports skin tones
• Modifier: 🏿 (U+1F3FF)
• Result: a single emoji showing that base in a dark skin tone

On most phones and computers, you never type the modifier directly. You long-press an emoji on your keyboard and choose the tone from a small palette. The keyboard inserts the correct modifier for you.

What Are the Five Skin Tone Modifiers in Unicode?

Unicode defines five skin tone modifiers, ranging from light to dark, and the Dark Skin Tone modifier is the last one in that range.

All five were added in Unicode 8.0 and map to Fitzpatrick types 1 and 2 through type 6. The set includes light, medium-light, medium, medium-dark, and dark. Dark Skin Tone uses U+1F3FF, the highest codepoint in the group, which is why it sits at the end when the modifiers are listed in order.

The default, unmodified version of most people emojis is shown in a neutral yellow tone on many platforms. That yellow is intentionally not meant to represent any specific ethnicity. Adding a modifier replaces it with a human skin tone.

To see how a light tone looks on a real emoji, you can compare it with the woman shrugging with light skin tone, which uses the opposite end of the same scale.

What Does 🏿 Mean in Texting and on Social Media?

In texting and on social media, 🏿 usually signals that the sender is using a dark-skinned version of another emoji, often to represent themselves or to show inclusion.

Most people never send the bare modifier. They send it as part of a combined emoji, such as a dark-skinned hand giving a thumbs up or a dark-skinned person facepalming. The choice often carries personal meaning: it can reflect the sender's own identity, a wish to see people like them represented, or support for others who share that skin tone.

When the modifier shows up alone, it appears as a plain dark brown square. People sometimes use it deliberately in a few ways:

• To show off the skin tone palette in a post about representation
• To demonstrate how emoji modifiers work in a tutorial or thread
• By accident, when a modifier is separated from its base emoji by a copy and paste error

Example messages that include the modifier as part of a larger emoji might look like this:

• Finally got the promotion 👍🏿 thanks for believing in me.
• Be there in ten 🤦🏿‍♀️ I forgot my keys again.

How Do You Use the Dark Skin Tone Emoji Correctly?

To use the Dark Skin Tone emoji correctly, attach it to a base emoji that supports skin tones, rather than sending it on its own.

On iOS and Android, the simplest method is to long-press a person or hand emoji in your keyboard and select the darkest shade from the pop-up. On desktop, most emoji pickers offer a skin tone selector at the top or bottom of the panel, and choosing it changes every compatible emoji in the picker at once.

Many keyboards remember your last chosen tone and apply it automatically from then on. If you want to switch back to the default yellow or change to another tone, you usually do this in the same long-press menu.

Not every emoji accepts the modifier. Objects, animals, food, and flags ignore it. Only emojis marked as modifier bases in Unicode, mostly people, faces of people, hands, and body gestures, can take a skin tone.

As an example of a compatible base, the thumbs up emoji accepts all five modifiers. The woman technologist emoji is another person emoji that supports skin tone selection, so a dark-skinned version is available for it as well.

How Does the Dark Skin Tone Emoji Look on Different Platforms?

The Dark Skin Tone modifier appears as a dark brown square when shown alone, and each platform renders the shade slightly differently according to its own emoji design.

Support arrived across major platforms shortly after Unicode 8.0 was finalized. Based on the data for this emoji, it is supported on:

• Apple: iOS 9.1+ and macOS 10.11.1+
• Google: Android 6.0.1+
• Microsoft: Windows 10+
• Samsung: One UI 1.0+
• Meta: WhatsApp 2.17+
• Twitter: Twemoji 2.0+

Each vendor draws its own artwork, so the exact depth of brown, the shading, and the edges of the square can differ from one system to the next. The emoji version is 1.0 in this database's listing, but the underlying Unicode character was introduced with Unicode 8.0.

On devices that do not support emoji modifiers, the sequence may fall back to showing the base emoji followed by a separate brown square. That can look like two symbols instead of one, so if you see that, the device or app likely needs an update.

Which Emojis Pair Well With the Dark Skin Tone Modifier?

The modifier pairs with any people or body emoji that accepts skin tones, and the most common choices are hands, gestures, and person emojis.

Popular combinations include thumbs up, clapping hands, raised fist, folded hands, and waving hand. For expressive reactions, people often choose shrugging and facepalming emojis, which come in several gender variants and all five skin tones.

Some pairing ideas that make sense in daily conversation:

• 🏿 with a hand emoji for agreement or celebration
• 🏿 with a person gesture emoji for reactions such as shrugging or facepalming
• 🏿 with a profession emoji such as a technologist, to represent yourself at work

You can also combine a skin-toned emoji with unmodified emojis in the same message. For example, a dark-skinned thumbs up next to the eyes emoji works well for a casual reaction like seen it 👍🏿👀. If you want to explore what other people are sending right now, the trending emojis page shows what is popular.

When Should You Avoid Using the Dark Skin Tone Emoji?

You should avoid the Dark Skin Tone emoji when it would be used to mock, stereotype, or single out someone based on their skin color.

The modifier itself is neutral and exists to help people represent themselves. Problems arise when it is used out of context, such as attaching it to a joke that relies on racial stereotypes, or using it to describe a group of people without their consent. Treat it with the same respect you would apply to a description of someone's appearance in words.

A few practical points to keep in mind:

• Choose the tone that reflects you, or the person you mean to depict, rather than picking one for humor or effect
• Avoid using skin tone modifiers to imitate or caricature other groups
• If you are unsure, the default yellow emoji is a safe neutral option

In professional or formal messages, there is no rule against skin tone modifiers. They are simply part of how people use emoji to represent themselves. Whether you use them at all depends on your workplace tone.

How Do You Copy and Paste the Dark Skin Tone Emoji?

You can copy the Dark Skin Tone emoji with one click on this page and paste it anywhere that accepts text, including messages, social posts, and documents.

Click the copy button next to 🏿 at the top of this page, and the character is placed on your clipboard. Then paste it with Ctrl+V on Windows or Cmd+V on Mac, or by long-pressing in a text field on mobile and choosing Paste.

Keep in mind that pasting the bare modifier gives you only the brown square. If you want a skin-toned hand or person, copy the finished emoji from its own page instead, or paste a base emoji first and then add this modifier right after it with no space in between.

If you would rather build a message from plain words, the emoji translator tool can turn your text into emojis that you can then adjust with a skin tone of your choice.