The Handshake: Medium Skin Tone, Dark Skin Tone emoji (🫱🏽🫲🏿) means agreement, partnership, and mutual respect between two people, shown with two different skin tones. It is used for sealed deals, greetings, solidarity, and cooperation, and it lets senders represent a handshake between people of different backgrounds.
What Does the Handshake: Medium Skin Tone, Dark Skin Tone Emoji Mean?
This emoji shows two hands clasping in a handshake, with the left hand in a medium skin tone and the right hand in a dark skin tone, and it stands for agreement, trust, and partnership.
Like the classic handshake emoji, it carries the meaning of a deal being made, a greeting being exchanged, or two sides coming together. What sets this version apart is that each hand has its own skin tone, so the image reads as a meeting between two different people rather than one person's hands.
That detail matters to many senders. A single-tone handshake can feel generic or may not reflect the people actually involved. A two-tone handshake lets you show the real mix of identities behind a partnership, a friendship, or a collaboration.
Core meanings at a glance
- Agreement: "We have a deal."
- Partnership: two people or teams joining forces.
- Greeting: a respectful hello or welcome.
- Solidarity: standing together across differences.
- Trust: good faith between two parties.
Why Does This Emoji Have Two Different Skin Tones?
The emoji uses two skin tones because Unicode 14.0 introduced a handshake that can be shown with a separate skin tone on each hand.
Before that release, the handshake (🤝) had no skin tone options at all, and it appeared in a default yellow on most platforms. Unicode 14.0 added the ability to color each hand independently, which made it possible to depict handshakes between people with different skin tones. This particular version pairs medium with dark, one of many combinations in the set.
Under the hood, the emoji is a sequence of characters rather than a single one. The codepoints are U+1FAF1 (rightwards hand), U+1F3FD (medium skin tone modifier), U+200D (zero width joiner), U+1FAF2 (leftwards hand), and U+1F3FF (dark skin tone modifier). Your device joins them into one image. The Unicode name is HANDSHAKE: MEDIUM SKIN TONE, DARK SKIN TONE, and it belongs to the People & Body category, which you can browse on the People & Body emojis page.
How Do You Use the Handshake: Medium Skin Tone, Dark Skin Tone Emoji?
Use it whenever you want to signal that two people or groups have reached an understanding, are working together, or are greeting each other warmly.
It works well in professional and personal messages alike because its tone is warm but formal enough for most settings. It rarely reads as sarcastic, which makes it a safe choice for confirming something or closing out a conversation on a positive note.
Everyday examples
- Contract signed, pleasure doing business with you 🫱🏽🫲🏿
- Thank you for welcoming me to the team 🫱🏽🫲🏿
- Two communities, one mission. Proud to partner up 🫱🏽🫲🏿
Notice that the emoji usually lands at the end of a sentence, much like a sign-off. It adds a feeling of finality and goodwill to whatever came before it.
What Does This Emoji Mean in Texting and on Social Media?
In texting and on social media, it most often means "deal," "thank you," or "we are in this together," and it frequently carries a message about unity and inclusion.
In direct messages, people use it to confirm plans or agreements quickly: a short reply with just this emoji can stand in for "agreed" or "sounds good." In public posts, it often accompanies announcements about collaborations, mentorships, community events, and cross-cultural friendships.
Because the two hands are visibly different, the emoji also gets used in posts about diversity, representation, and building bridges between groups. Brands, nonprofits, and organizations sometimes pick this version over the default handshake to make that message visible at a glance.
How Does This Handshake Differ From the Standard Handshake Emoji?
The main difference is that this version shows two distinct skin tones and is built from two hand emojis joined together, while the standard handshake (🤝) is a single character with no skin tone variation.
That has a few practical consequences:
- Representation: you can choose a combination that matches the people involved.
- Support: because it arrived in Unicode 14.0, older devices may not display it correctly.
- Skin tone picker: this emoji does not take a further skin tone modifier, since the tones are already built into it.
Meaning-wise, the two are nearly identical. If you simply want to say "deal" and do not care about showing specific tones, the classic version works fine. If you want the image to reflect the real people in the conversation, the two-tone version is the better pick.
Which Platforms Support This Emoji?
The emoji is supported on recent versions of major platforms, but older operating systems may show two separate hands instead of a single handshake.
- Apple: iOS 15.4+ and macOS 12.3+
- Google: Android 12L and later
- Microsoft: Windows 11 22H2 and later
- Samsung: One UI 5.0 and later
- WhatsApp: version 2.22 and later
- Twitter: Twemoji 14.0 and later
The emoji version is 14.0, so any device that has not received that update will not recognize the full sequence. When that happens, the recipient may see a leftwards hand and a rightwards hand side by side, possibly with small colored squares showing the skin tones, rather than one joined handshake. Each platform also draws the emoji in its own art style, so the exact look of the hands, the angle, and the shading will vary from one device to the next.
Which Emojis Pair Well With the Two-Tone Handshake?
The handshake pairs naturally with emojis that reinforce agreement, approval, and teamwork.
- 👍 Thumbs Up to add an extra note of approval after an agreement.
- 👩💻 Woman Technologist for a professional partnership in tech or a new working relationship.
- 👀 Eyes for a playful "watch this space" tease about an upcoming collaboration.
A message like New partnership announcement coming soon 👀🫱🏽🫲🏿 uses the pairing to build curiosity while keeping the tone positive. If you are unsure which combinations are popular, the trending emojis page shows what people are using right now.
When Should You Avoid the Handshake Emoji?
Avoid it when the situation is tense, unresolved, or when a handshake image could come across as dismissive or insincere.
Because this emoji signals agreement and goodwill, using it in the middle of an unresolved dispute may seem like you are closing a conversation before the other person is ready. It can also feel hollow if the surrounding message is critical or cold.
A few other cautions apply:
- Representation should be accurate: picking a skin tone combination that does not fit the people involved can look careless, so choose with intention.
- Do not treat it as a stand-in for real action: posting the emoji alongside a statement about diversity does not replace actual commitment.
- Check the recipient's device: if you are not sure they have a recent phone, a plain text "agreed" may be safer.
How Do You Copy and Paste the Handshake: Medium Skin Tone, Dark Skin Tone Emoji?
You can copy this emoji with one click on this page and paste it into any message, post, or document.
Click the emoji 🫱🏽🫲🏿 at the top of this page to copy it instantly, then paste it wherever you are writing, using Ctrl+V on Windows or Command+V on a Mac, or a long press and Paste on a phone. Because it is a sequence of several codepoints, always copy the whole emoji rather than selecting parts of it, so the two hands stay joined.
If you would like to turn a full sentence into emojis, try the Emoji Translator, which converts text into emoji for you. For a different tone, such as a shrug or a facepalm, you can also look at the Woman Shrugging emoji for moments when agreement is not quite on the table.
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