The Kiss: Person, Person, Medium-dark Skin Tone, Dark Skin Tone emoji (🧑🏾❤️💋🧑🏿) shows two people sharing a romantic kiss, one with a medium-dark skin tone and one with a dark skin tone. It means love, affection, and intimacy between partners, and it lets you represent a real couple with matching skin tones in one character.
What Does the Kiss: Person, Person, Medium-dark Skin Tone, Dark Skin Tone Emoji Mean?
This emoji means two people are kissing, and it signals romantic love, tenderness, or a moment of closeness between partners.
The image pairs two gender-neutral figures leaning in for a kiss, with a small heart between them in most designs. One figure has a medium-dark skin tone (Fitzpatrick type 5) and the other has a dark skin tone (Fitzpatrick type 6). Because the people are drawn without gendered features, the emoji works for any couple: two men, two women, a man and a woman, or partners who are nonbinary.
The skin tone combination matters. Many people want emoji that look like the relationships they actually live in, and this version gives couples with these two tones a character that reflects them instead of a default yellow pair.
Quick facts about this emoji
- Category: People & Body
- Unicode version: 13.1
- Emoji version: 13.1
- Codepoints: U+1F9D1 U+1F3FE U+200D U+2764 U+FE0F U+200D U+1F48B U+200D U+1F9D1 U+1F3FF
- Shortcode: :kiss_person_person_medium_dark_skin_tone_dark_skin_tone:
How Is This Emoji Built From Smaller Emojis?
This emoji is a ZWJ sequence, meaning several separate emoji characters are glued together by invisible Zero Width Joiner characters (U+200D) so that devices display them as one image.
The sequence starts with a person (U+1F9D1) carrying a medium-dark skin tone modifier (U+1F3FE). Then come a heart (U+2764 with the variation selector U+FE0F) and a kiss mark (U+1F48B), and the sequence ends with a second person (U+1F9D1) carrying a dark skin tone modifier (U+1F3FF). That is ten codepoints in total, displayed as a single glyph.
The practical consequence is that older software can fall back to showing the pieces separately: two people, a heart, and a kiss mark side by side, instead of one image. If you see that, the device simply does not recognize the combined character yet.
How Do You Use This Emoji in Texting and on Social Media?
You use it to express romantic affection, usually toward a partner, or to celebrate a couple in a post, a caption, or a message.
In private chats it works as a sweet sign-off, a greeting, or a playful reaction to something your partner did. On social media it shows up on anniversary posts, engagement announcements, and couple photos, where it stands in for words like "we love each other."
Here are a few realistic examples:
- Three years today and I would choose you all over again 🧑🏾❤️💋🧑🏿
- Goodnight, love. See you at breakfast 🧑🏾❤️💋🧑🏿
- Date night with my favorite person 🧑🏾❤️💋🧑🏿
Because the emoji depicts a physical kiss, it carries more intimacy than a simple heart. Use it when the relationship is clearly romantic and the recipient will welcome it.
Why Does Skin Tone Representation Matter for Couple Emojis?
Skin tone options let couples see themselves in the emoji they send, which makes the message feel more personal and more accurate.
Couple emojis were among the last to get full skin tone support. The Unicode Consortium added individual tone combinations for people-based couples in Unicode 13.1, which is why this character shares that version number. Before that, kissing and couple emojis offered only a default look, so many partners could not match their own appearance.
Each person in the pair can have a different tone, which means interracial and intercultural couples, and couples who share a close tone like this one, can pick the exact pairing that fits. Note that the pairing here is fixed in a specific order: medium-dark for the first person and dark for the second. A reversed pairing is a separate emoji in the set.
How Does This Emoji Look on Different Platforms?
It appears as a drawn couple in a kiss on every supporting platform, but the art style, line weight, and heart placement differ by vendor.
Support begins with recent software versions, since this emoji arrived in version 13.1:
- Apple: iOS 14.5+ and macOS 11.3+
- Google: Android 12.0+
- Microsoft: Windows 11+
- Samsung: One UI 4.0+
- Meta: WhatsApp 2.21.16+
- X (Twitter): Twemoji 13.1+
If your phone or computer runs an older system, the sequence may break into two people, a heart, and a kiss mark. Updating your operating system usually fixes this. Also remember that the person you are texting needs a supported device to see the same image you sent.
Which Emojis Pair Well With the Kiss Emoji?
Hearts, sparkles, and celebratory symbols pair best, since they reinforce the romantic mood without changing the meaning.
Some combinations people use often:
- 🧑🏾❤️💋🧑🏿 plus ❤️ for a straightforward declaration of love
- 🧑🏾❤️💋🧑🏿 plus ✨ for a dreamy anniversary caption
- 🧑🏾❤️💋🧑🏿 plus 🥂 for a celebration or engagement toast
- 🧑🏾❤️💋🧑🏿 plus 🌙 for a sweet goodnight
If you want to hint at a playful, flirty reaction, the Eyes emoji can add a teasing note, as in a caption that says you are watching your partner across the room. A Thumbs Up emoji is better for casual approval of a plan and does not belong beside a kiss unless you are joking around.
If you want to build longer messages out of emoji, the Emoji Translator can turn a plain sentence into an emoji version you can tweak.
When Should You Avoid the Kiss Emoji?
Avoid it in professional, formal, or family-group settings, and with anyone who has not clearly shared romantic feelings with you.
A kiss emoji can read as unexpectedly intimate. Sending it to a coworker, a manager, or a new acquaintance can create an awkward moment, even if you meant it warmly. In a work chat, a smile or a thumbs up communicates friendliness without the romantic weight.
It also is not a good fit for sharing a friend's relationship news in a public thread unless the couple has already announced it. And when you are unsure how a crush feels, a lighter emoji lets you test the waters before escalating to a kiss.
One more caution: do not use a skin tone couple emoji to guess at someone else's identity. Pick the pairing that fits you and your partner, or the couple you are celebrating, and let them speak for themselves.
How Do You Copy and Paste This Emoji?
You can copy this emoji with one click on this page, then paste it into any message, post, or document.
Click the copy button near the emoji at the top of this page, and the full character is placed on your clipboard, including every invisible joiner that holds the sequence together. Then paste it into your app with the usual shortcut (Ctrl+V on Windows and Android keyboards, Cmd+V on Mac) or by long-pressing in the text field on a phone.
Copying and pasting is the most reliable method for a long ZWJ sequence like this one, since typing ten codepoints by hand is impractical. If you want to explore similar characters, browse the full People & Body emoji category, or check what is popular on the trending emojis page.
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