The heart symbol (♥ ❤) — a card-suit glyph that became the universal sign for love — plus its emoji versions and the <3 text heart. Click any symbol to copy it instantly.
The heart symbol (♥, Unicode U+2665 BLACK HEART SUIT) began life as a playing-card suit mark and is now one of the most-copied characters on the internet. Unicode actually has several hearts: the monochrome card-suit ♥, the heavier ❤ (U+2764) that becomes the red heart emoji ❤️ with a variation selector, the outline ♡, and a full palette of colored heart emoji. The stylized shape has never matched a real anatomical heart — its origins are debated — but it has meant love and affection in Western art since the Middle Ages.
The core heart glyphs: the card-suit heart, the heavy black heart that anchors the emoji, and the outline.
The variation-selector emoji versions in the common colors.
Typed shortcuts and decorative hearts used in bios and captions.
The ♥ shape predates its link to love. Theories for its origin range from the seedpod of silphium — an ancient contraceptive plant so valuable to the city of Cyrene that it appeared on the city's coins — to stylized ivy or fig leaves, to medieval attempts at drawing the human heart from imperfect anatomy. By the late Middle Ages the shape was firmly tied to love and courtly romance in European art, and it later became the hearts suit in French-suited playing cards — which is exactly the character Unicode encodes at U+2665, BLACK HEART SUIT.
Unicode's hearts are spread across two blocks. The card suits — ♥ (U+2665) and its outline ♡ (U+2661) — sit in Miscellaneous Symbols, while the heavier ❤ (U+2764) and the ornamental hearts ❣ ❥ ❦ ❧ come from the Dingbats block. The red heart emoji ❤️ is ❤ followed by an emoji variation selector (U+FE0F); without it, the same code point renders as plain black text. Solid-color hearts like 🖤 (U+1F5A4), 💙, 💚, and 💜 are separate emoji code points added later. The <3 text heart, meanwhile, is just a less-than sign and a 3 read sideways — an emoticon, not a Unicode heart at all.
| Platform / Tool | Method |
|---|---|
| Windows (legacy Alt code) | Alt+3 on the numeric keypad → ♥ |
| Windows (Word / Unicode input) | Type 2665 (♥) or 2764 (❤), then press Alt+X |
| Mac | Character Viewer (Cmd+Ctrl+Space), search "heart" |
| iOS / Android | Emoji keyboard, search "heart" to insert ❤️ |
| HTML | ♥ or ♥ (♥); ❤ (❤) |
CSS content | content: "\2665" |
♥ (U+2665) is the black heart suit from playing cards and usually renders as a small monochrome heart; ❤ (U+2764) is the heavy black heart, a bolder glyph that becomes the red heart emoji ❤️ when followed by an emoji variation selector. Both read as love in practice.
The quickest is the classic Alt+3 on the numeric keypad, which produces ♥. You can also type 2665 then Alt+X in Word, or simply copy a heart from this page.
Not quite. The text heart <3 is an emoticon — a less-than sign and the digit 3 that look like a sideways heart — not a Unicode character. The heart symbol ♥ (U+2665) and the emoji ❤️ are real encoded characters. All three read as hearts, but only ♥ and ❤️ are actual glyphs.
A red heart needs the emoji form — ❤️, which is ❤ plus a variation selector. If the plain character ❤ or ♥ is used, or the platform lacks emoji support, it falls back to a monochrome black heart.
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