The drooling face emoji 🤤 means craving, hunger, or intense desire for something. It shows a yellow face with a content, slightly dreamy expression and a drop of saliva running from the mouth. People use it for tempting food, attractive people, or anything they badly want, usually in a playful, lighthearted way.
What Does the Drooling Face Emoji Mean?
The drooling face emoji expresses a strong want: the kind that makes your mouth water. It is the visual shorthand for "I need that right now."
The image shows a smiling or softly grinning face with a stream of drool escaping from one corner of the mouth. That drool is the whole point. It turns a simple smile into a reaction to something irresistible.
Unicode officially names it DROOLING FACE, while Apple's own label for it is simply "Drool." It sits in the Smileys & Emotion category, alongside the other face emojis that communicate feelings and physical sensations. You can browse the whole group on the Smileys & Emotion emoji category page.
The Three Main Meanings
- Food craving: the most common use, for pizza, desserts, burgers, or anything that looks delicious.
- Attraction: a flirty or admiring reaction to a person, often in a lighthearted, joking tone.
- Wanting an object or experience: a new phone, a vacation, a concert ticket, or a sale item.
How Do You Use the Drooling Face Emoji?
Use the drooling face when something genuinely makes you want it, and place it right next to the thing that triggers the reaction.
It works best as a reaction rather than a statement. You see a photo, a menu, or a product, and 🤤 communicates your response in one character. It rarely needs extra explanation because the drool does the talking.
Here are realistic examples of how people use it:
- That chocolate lava cake just arrived at the next table 🤤
- Saturday brunch plans and I am already thinking about the pancakes 🤤
- The new console bundle is on sale tomorrow 🤤🎮
Notice that in each case the emoji follows the object of desire. Placing it at the end of a sentence is the most natural position, though repeating it (🤤🤤🤤) is a common way to show you want something even more.
What Does 🤤 Mean in Texting and on Social Media?
In texting and social media, 🤤 usually signals "that looks amazing" and is most often attached to food posts, product reveals, or attractive photos.
On food content, it is practically a standard comment. Under a photo of a stacked sandwich or a glossy dessert, a row of drooling faces says what words would take longer to say. Food bloggers, restaurant accounts, and home cooks all get this reaction constantly.
On posts about people, the meaning shifts. Under a flattering selfie or a photo of someone's outfit, 🤤 can be read as a flirtatious compliment. Context and your relationship with the person decide whether it comes across as friendly teasing or something more romantic.
Tone Differences by Context
- Between friends: playful and exaggerated, often a joke.
- On a food post: purely appreciative.
- Toward a crush or partner: flirty, and sometimes suggestive.
- Toward a stranger or colleague: can feel too forward, so use caution.
How Is 🤤 Different From Similar Emojis?
The drooling face is about wanting something outward, while many nearby emojis describe an inner state like calm, sadness, or fatigue.
It is easy to confuse a few faces because they share a similar mouth or a similar fluid detail. Here is how they compare:
- 😪 Sleepy Face has a bubble from the nose and shows tiredness, not desire.
- 😴 Sleeping Face means someone is asleep or bored, with "Zzz" energy.
- 😌 Relieved Face shows calm satisfaction after something is finished, not anticipation.
- 😔 Pensive Face expresses quiet sadness or reflection, the opposite mood of eager craving.
One genuine point of confusion is that drool can also suggest sleep in real life. In emoji, though, 🤤 is almost never used to mean someone is asleep. Readers interpret it as desire or hunger first.
Which Emojis Pair Well With 🤤?
The best pairings put the thing you want right beside the drooling face, or add another emotion to sharpen the tone.
For food, combine it with the dish itself: 🍕🤤, 🍰🤤, 🍔🤤, or 🍣🤤. This is the clearest and most universally understood combination, and it works in any chat.
For humor, add laughter. A message that says you want something absurdly badly can end with 🤤😂, using 😂 Face With Tears Of Joy to show you know you are being dramatic.
For comic despair, pair it with 😭 Loudly Crying Face when you want the thing but cannot have it. That combination, 🤤😭, communicates the pain of staring at a dessert you are not allowed to eat or a purchase you cannot afford.
To see which combinations are popular at the moment, check what people are using on the trending emojis page.
When Should You Avoid the Drooling Face Emoji?
Avoid 🤤 in formal, professional, or sensitive conversations, and be careful when aiming it at a person you do not know well.
In workplace messaging, a drooling face can read as unprofessional. Reacting to a catered lunch announcement is fine in a casual team channel, but it looks out of place in an email to a client or a message to a manager you rarely speak with.
The bigger risk is directing it at another person. Because the emoji carries an undertone of physical desire, sending it to someone who has not signaled romantic interest can feel inappropriate or uncomfortable. If you want to compliment someone's appearance without ambiguity, choose a different emoji or use words.
It is also best avoided in situations involving grief, illness, or serious news. The emoji is lighthearted by nature, so it clashes with heavy topics.
How Does the Drooling Face Emoji Look on Different Platforms?
The drooling face appears on all major platforms, but each vendor draws the drool, the eyes, and the mouth in its own style.
The emoji was approved as part of Unicode 9.0 and added to the Emoji standard in Emoji 3.0, with the codepoint U+1F924 and the shortcode :drooling_face:. It is a single-codepoint emoji and does not support skin tones, because it is a yellow face rather than a person.
Support begins with these versions:
- Apple: iOS 10.0+ and macOS 10.12+
- Google: Android 7.0+
- Microsoft: Windows 10 Anniversary Update and later
- Samsung: One UI 1.0+
- Meta: WhatsApp 2.17+
- Twitter: Twemoji 2.2+
If a friend has a much older phone or operating system, they may see an empty box or question mark instead of the emoji. This is rare today, but it explains why an occasional message shows a placeholder symbol.
Because the artwork differs between vendors, the same emoji can feel slightly different. One platform may show a broad grin and another a more subtle, dreamy smile. The meaning stays the same: desire and craving.
How Do You Copy and Paste the Drooling Face Emoji?
You can copy the drooling face emoji 🤤 with one click on this page and paste it straight into any app.
Click the copy button on this page, then paste it into your message, social media caption, document, or comment box. It works anywhere that accepts text, including WhatsApp, Instagram, X, email, and notes apps.
If you prefer typing it, the shortcode :drooling_face: works in many chat tools such as Slack and Discord. If you are not sure which emoji fits what you want to say, try the Emoji Translator, which turns your text into emojis and can help you find the right reaction.
Keep the emoji for the moments it fits best: a sizzling plate of food, a great deal, or a thing you cannot stop thinking about. Used that way, one small drop of drool says everything.
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