👋 is an open hand waving, and the one gesture does double duty: it greets people when they arrive and waves them off when they leave. It was among the first emoji to enter Unicode in 2010, and the official name is simply “waving hand.” Because the picture is the same either way, position tells you the meaning. At the start of a message it says “hi.” At the end it says “bye.” Plenty of people just call it the “wave” or “hello hand.”
How it’s used
- A casual hello: “hey 👋 got a minute?”
- Welcoming someone: “Welcome to the team 👋”
- Signing off: “I’m heading out, see you tomorrow 👋”
- Opening a post or bio: “👋 Hi, I’m Sam, a product designer in Leeds.”
- Wistful goodbye: “thanks for everything, take care 👋”
In a group chat, a lone 👋 can mean “I’m here” or “I’m off” without another word. It is not the same as ✋ (raised hand), which leans toward “stop” or “hold on,” or 🙌 (raising hands), which is celebratory.
Korea, Japan and the English-speaking world
In English, 👋 is above all the opening wave on a post, newsletter or product page: “👋 Welcome to my channel.” The two-word message “hey 👋” is one of the shortest greetings online. At the end of a chat, “see you 👋” is a warm goodbye, and occasionally a bit of a dismissal, when someone uses it after an argument to say “I’m done here.”
Korean 안녕 works for both hello and goodbye, so 👋 fits neatly in both places. It is familiar from the “bye-bye” wave adults make to children, which is why it shows up in kids’ content and family group chats. At work it is read as friendly rather than formal, so people tend to add polite wording for senior colleagues.
In Japan, 手を振る (“waving the hand”) is most closely tied to goodbye: バイバイ👋 is the classic. It also appears as a light hello (やあ👋). Note that both Japan and Korea beckon someone over with the palm facing down, a gesture that can look like a wave goodbye to Westerners, so the emoji’s meaning does not map one-to-one onto every physical gesture.
Where it gets misread
- Greeting or farewell is decided by placement. A 👋 at the end of a message read as a welcome may feel out of step.
- Left alone in the middle of a disagreement, it can read as “I’m leaving this conversation.”
- ✋, 🖐️ and 🤚 are raised-palm hands that suggest “stop,” “high five” or “wait,” not a wave.
- 👏 (clapping) and 🙌 are different actions entirely.
- Skin-tone variants exist, so a default yellow wave is usually the safest choice for a group message.
Design differences by platform
The basic shape is shared: an open palm facing the viewer with spread fingers. Many designs add motion marks beside the hand, or tilt it slightly, to separate it from a still hand. Apple’s is realistically shaded with defined finger joints, Google’s Noto is round and simple, Microsoft’s Fluent has more three-dimensional depth, and Samsung’s feels light and soft. The exact details vary, but on any device it reads clearly as a friendly wave.
