😚 is a yellow face with both eyes closed and lips puckered for a kiss. Most people just call it the “kissy face” or “closed-eyes kiss.” It arrived in Unicode 6.0 in 2010 alongside the other kissing faces, and on most platforms it has rosy cheeks, which gives it a bashful, childlike feel. Unlike 😘 there is no heart flying out, so it leans toward “aw, I love you” affection rather than romance or flirting.
How it’s used
- Affection to family: “Love you, Mom 😚”
- Sweet thanks: “Got the package, you’re the best 😚”
- Buttering someone up: “Just this once? 😚”
- Selfie or food captions: “Hair finally cooperated today 😚”
- Goodnight between partners: “Night 😚”
If 😘 is a confident “mwah!” with a heart attached, 😚 is a quiet, eyes-shut peck. The open-eyed 😗 often reads as whistling or playing innocent rather than kissing, and 😙 has smiling eyes, making it the most cheerful of the four.
Korea, Japan and the English-speaking world
In English, many people lump 😚 and 😘 together as “kissy faces,” but there is a gradient. 😘 is close to “love you”; 😚 sits nearer to “aww, thanks.” Kids send it to parents, close female friends sign off texts with it, and on dating apps it reads as a softer, less committed signal of interest than 😘. It rarely appears in work chat.
In Korea it works as an aegyo (cute-act) emoji. Couples use it, but so do female friends and parents and children, often with onomatopoeia like “쪽” (the sound of a peck). When men use it, it can come across as jokey or a little greasy, so men tend to save it for very close relationships. It is essentially absent from workplace messaging.
In Japan the official name is ちゅっ, literally the sound of a kiss. It carries an idol-or-mascot “deliberately cute” flavor and is popular with teenage girls and fans on social media. Sent to someone of the opposite sex it can be read as a genuine signal of attraction, so Japanese users are somewhat more careful with it than English speakers are.
Where it gets misread
- Sending it to a colleague or boss, especially across genders, is easily taken as flirting. For work thanks, 🙏 or 😊 is safer.
- It is often confused with 😗 (open eyes), which carries a whistling, “who, me?” nuance. If you mean a kiss, use 😚 or 😘.
- 😙 has curved, smiling eyes and reads brighter and more playful; 😚 with tightly shut eyes looks shy or earnest.
- On some platforms the blush is faint or missing, so what you sent as “shy peck” can land as a flat, pursed-lipped face.
Design differences by platform
Apple draws thin closed-eye lines and a clear pink blush, giving the most bashful look. Google’s Noto face is rounder with small lips and a lighter blush, closer to a child’s expression. Microsoft’s Fluent version is dimensional with well-defined lips, so the kiss is unmistakable. Samsung curves the closed eyes upward, so it can look like it is smiling, almost like 😙. Because the presence and strength of the blush varies, the sender’s shyness doesn’t always survive the trip to another device.
