🤝 handshake Skin Tones — All 5 Variants
The handshake is agreement, partnership and greeting — the professional emoji. It is also the one emoji in the entire catalog where the two hands can carry two different skin tones: beyond the five same-tone variants, Unicode defines twenty-five mixed-tone handshake sequences, so the grip can literally show two different people shaking hands.
The five variants
🤝🏻handshake: light skin toneU+1F91D U+1F3FB🤝🏼handshake: medium-light skin toneU+1F91D U+1F3FC🤝🏽handshake: medium skin toneU+1F91D U+1F3FD🤝🏾handshake: medium-dark skin toneU+1F91D U+1F3FE🤝🏿handshake: dark skin toneU+1F91D U+1F3FF
Every variant copies exactly like the base character: tap a card and the sequence is on your clipboard, ready to paste anywhere. Skin-tone modifiers (U+1F3FB–U+1F3FF) were added to the standard in Unicode 8.0 (2015). handshake itself was added in Emoji E3.0 (2016).
Usage and context
It closes deals, seals agreements and greets partners: “pleasure doing business”, “we have a deal”, “good to team up”. Same-tone variants are the everyday choice; the mixed-tone sequences appear when the meeting itself is the point — organizations use them in partnership announcements to show two parties. The yellow default stays neutral and formal.
The mixed-tone sequences are encoded as a ZWJ combination of two hand characters, so not every keyboard or older platform offers all twenty-five — most surfaces expose the five same-tone choices only.
Skin tones for other emoji
waving hand · folded hands · raising hands · thumbs up · thumbs down · flexed biceps · nail polish · raised back of hand · hand with fingers splayed · raised hand · vulcan salute · ok hand · pinched fingers · victory hand · crossed fingers · love you gesture · sign of the horns · call me hand · backhand index pointing right · backhand index pointing up · middle finger · index pointing up · raised fist · oncoming fist · clapping hands · palms up together