How to get colored hearts on facebook

How to Make a Heart on Facebook - Appamatix

Sometimes it’s best to show your feelings by using emoticons instead of words. Words can be clumsy, or just time consuming. Meanwhile, you want to bypass words and go straight to the idea. That’s the sort of thing emoticons (or emoji) simulate. Like the cartoon character who gets so angry that a storm cloud forms over his head, or so happy that she starts levitating, communicating with emoticons creates the impression of an experience so pure, and so all-consuming, that it can’t satisfactorily be put into words. That’s why I’ve created this post showing you how to make your own heart on Facebook.

Be it a broken heart, hearts of different colors, or an old school red valentine heart, I’ve got you covered. I’ll also break down options for iPhone, Android, Mac and PC depending on what device you’re using and what type of heart you want to show your friends, since Facebook is available through every platform.

But first, I’ll give you a little background on the emoji compared to an emoticon, how they were developed and how they’re meant to be used. This is especially important when using different devices and texting with people from different countries, as sometimes different cultures have developed contradictory ways to express emotions graphically.

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.” – Helen Keller

Facebook Heart Meaning and Origin

If you’re unfamiliar with emoji then you likely haven’t been texting for very long. Or ever. It’s an incredibly popular way to express your emotions in a concise and simple way. In the 1990’s a team of Japanese developers created a set of 172 emoji that were simple 8 bit images used to convey emotions in a simple image. Emoji are simply graphical extension of the punctuation based emoticons that had already taken hold in popular usage. Instead of saying “I’m smiling right now,” a simple “: )” said the same thing. Well, emoji goes a step further, by replacing that “: )” (or any other popular combination) with an actual picture of a little smiling face.

Immediately these emoji took off and became instantly a commonly used feature of texting among friends. Different developers jumped on the bandwagon and developed even more emoji to express not only a wider ranger of emtions, but to help communicate other ideas pictorially: a rose, an airplane, a piece of sushi. Or my favorite, the smiling piece of poop. When I look through emoji lists, I’m not always sure what I would use a particular icon for. But rest assured, somebody out there is using them. So much so that now most smart phones include an additional “emoji keyboard” standard as part of their native messaging apps, so you won’t be tempted to switch to a third-party app for you messaging needs.This is a simple and easy way to let everyone know how you feel or what you’re thinking without having to spell it out. On top of that, it’s fun and can be silly to use depending on which emoji you choose to send.

Because of this incredible popularity, Facebook has built in a set of heart emoji into their system so you can use them when updating your status, commenting on a photo, or using Facebook Messenger with friends. However, actually implementing a heart emoji and figuring out what different devices work with different emoji is not a trivial pursuit.

The Various Heart Emoji & Meanings

You may or may not be well versed when it comes to creating your very own heart emoji. Below Is a quick view of all the various hearts that you can use and ones that Facebook supports on their platform. I’ll outline each one and a quick description from left to right.

• A standard red heart that everyone is familiar with
• A broken heart, let’s hope you won’t have to use this one often
• Red heart with less glare. This is just another variation of the standard heart.
• Vibrating pink heart. A common emoji when you’re feeling a ton of love all over. (This one also could be used as a growing heart, such as how the Grinch’s heart grew three sizes when he finally realized the meaning of Christmas.)
• Another variation of a vibrating pink heart
• Two pink hearts (which could mean a number of things: your heart and the heart of the person you like, just a series of heart bubbles, like in the cartoons, or maybe that you’re a romantic Time Lord)
• A few twinkles on top of a heart. Not sure the point of this one. Maybe you just got your heart waxed and detailed.
• Two hearts moving in a circle. Merry Go Round!
• An arrow through a heart (Cupid). Another great one for Valentine’s day.
• A yellow, blue, purple, and green heart. A bit unconventional, but still pretty cool.
• A pink heart wrapped in a bow. This is a great Valentine’s day emoji.
• An emoji face blowing a kiss. This is often used to a loved one to send kisses to them. Don’t use this one too early, as you may come across as creepy if you’re not at that stage yet.
• Someone with heart as their eyes. This typically means you love someone or love something like pizza.
• A cat with heart eyes. Which is much better than how cats usually communicate love: by vomiting in your shoes.
• Two people loving each other in two variations
• Sending a heartfelt message
• A church of love, a common emoji used for weddings and religious holidays.
• Sending love to a hospital. I hope you won’t have to use this but it’s often used if someone you love is sick in a hospital.
• A candy heart that are common around Valentine’s day or just a white heart inside of a pink square.

Now that we’ve got a good idea what our options are let’s get into a bit more detail on how to make a heart on Facebook and break it down by device depending on whether you’re on a PC, Mac, iPhone or Android.

Make A Facebook Heart Tricks

As with a lot of things, there are many ways to get what you’re looking for depending on how much time you want to put in, how much knowledge you have about messing with settings, and whether you want to customize the heart to a more unique one.

1. Easy Pink Heart

If you’re going for a very simple heart that is just the basic pink heart shown in the screenshot above you can go to any device and type in “<3” without the quotes. You will notice the heart won’t turn into an emoji right away. After you hit enter you will see it changes to a pink heart.

If you want to test this out before committing to hitting enter and everyone seeing it, you can set the status to private so you will only be able to see it and then just delete the status update right after you post it. That’s a good way to check to see whether any of these emoji’s work on your device.

This is a very standard option so it should work on any device and any operating system. If you want more of a variety then you will have to work a bit harder.

2. Copy and Paste Heart

The next option you have is to copy and paste an emoji from somewhere else and use it on your very own Facebook status or comment. This will work if you see an emoji on Facebook or on Google. The best site in my opinion for emoji’s is Emojipedia you can check out their site and copy and paste all of the options below straight into Facebook.

Even if your computer or mobile phone doesn’t support the emoji, you will notice that Facebook does. Therefore, you may find that some of the emoji are just blank squares. This means that the emoji is not supported by your device or operating system. But just copy and paste it into Facebook and hit publish to see it show up as a real heart!

This is your best and easiest option when it comes to showing any different type of heart on Facebook. However, if you use a certain heart often, you won’t want to find the website that has the emoji every time and copy and paste it. That’s when it’s more helpful to just have an emoji keyboard enabled on your computer so that you can easily type any emoji you want, including a heart.

Next up, I’ll walk you through steps to get an emoji keyboard on your PC, Mac, iPhone or Android device depending on what you use regularly.

Heart Emoji on an iPhone

If you use an iPhone you can turn on the built in emoji keyboard so you can find and use hearts often. To turn it on, simply follow these steps.

1. Go to your iPhone and tap on the Settings icon.
2. Then go to General and Keyboard.
3. Tap on Keyboards and tap to add a new keyboard.
4. Scroll down the list until you find emoji and tap it.
5. This will enable the emoji keyboard for use whenever you type on your iPhone. All you have to do is look for the little globe icon when you see the keyboard pop up. Tap the globe and the emoji keyboard will appear.

TIP: If you repeatedly use a heart emoji on Facebook you can tap the little clock icon at the bottom of the emoji keyboard, which is your recently used icons. This is a quick and easy way to get back to your heart and use it.

Heart Emoji on Android

If your main device of choice is an Android then you also have an easy way to enable emoji. Luckily, for both Android and iPhone, there are built in emoji keyboard so you won’t have to download external 3rd party apps to provide keyboards. You can turn them on by following these steps.

1. On your Android device, head over to the settings app.
2. Then tap on Language and input then Google Keyboard Settings.
3. You will notice an option for add-on dictionaries, go ahead and tap on it.
4. Download and install the Emoji for English Words app.

Then make sure you refresh the keyboard and you may have to quit out of Facebook for it to appear on the keyboard but you’ve just enabled heart emoji on your Android. Whenever you type a status or comment, you can quickly navigate to your favorite emoticon.

Facebook Emoji on PC or Mac

If you’re on a PC and want to insert your own favorite heart you can do so quickly and easily. All you have to do is open up the Character Map. The easiest way to do that is to click on the start icon at the bottom left and type in “Character Map” in the search icon. When the app comes up, click it to open.

Then you will just navigate to your favorite heart emoji, right click on it or press control + c to copy and paste it into your Facebook status.

If you’re on a Mac, it’s a similar process as with a PC. You will first want to head over to Facebook and click on the status or comment section. From there, click on the edit tab at the top, the third menu item from the left. At the very bottom you will notice the option for special characters. Click on it and scroll through the list of emoji until you find the heart one you want to use.

Right click on the heart emoji and paste it into the Facebook text box. You will notice that it also pastes a bunch of other info including the description and the unicode that is used to create the image. Just delete those and you can hit publish!

That wraps up this guide and hopefully gave you a clear idea of all the options out there in making a heart on Facebook. Also, particularly when it comes to cutting and pasting, know that you’re not always limited to just smiley faces and hearts. I’ve got a rotating stable of about half a dozen images I really like sending out to people in place of the standard emoticons. Right now, my favorite is Linda Belcher shouting “Alriiight,” though that is admittedly better suited to messaging than to Facebook.

Let us know in the comments if you have any other methods we haven’t thought of. It would also be great if you would share this post with your friends!

What Each Color Heart Emoji Means

In today’s episode of Things to Overanalyze, it’s time we take a good hard look at the different heart emoji colors. Because while you might not have considered this to ever be a thing, there are more than 20 different heart emoji options on the standard keyboard for people to choose from.

This means there’s an exact reason the person you’re seeing sent you an orange heart emoji instead of a red one.

To get a lil nerdy with you, emojis really do work off of a science. According to a 2021 Adobe study, 67 percent of emoji users around the globe think other people who use emojis are friendlier, funnier, and cooler than those who don’t. Plus, more than half of those folks are more comfortable expressing their feelings via emojis than by having traditional conversations.

So yes, it’s fair to say the color heart emoji you send and receive is a Big Deal. And while there’s no ~official~ translation, here are some general guidelines and tips as to what exactly each heart signifies when you send it or receive it from your partner.

Quick disclaimer though: This guide isn’t meant to impede on any inside jokes or meanings you and your friends or loved ones might have or any health reasons behind certain color hearts. Like everything else, context is key. But if you’re just curious whether or not you’re reading too much (or not enough) into a cryptic text or Insta comment, here’s the unofficially official breakdown.

1. 💙 Blue Heart 💙

Blue hearts have bro energy. Something about the classic collegiate tone of a royal blue is extremely, “What’s better than this? Just guys being dudes.”

This isn’t because blue is a gendered thing but more because the blue heart implies a sort of shallow friendship. You don’t send a blue heart to anyone you trust with your emotional baggage. You send it to the homies you see once a month or that girl you promise you’ll get brunch with “one of these days.”

Good for: Group chats when you have nothing to add, texting your parents when they check in, randos who DM you on Instagram in a nonsexual context.

Bad for: Eh, it’s hard to misuse this one, TBH.

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2. 💛 Yellow Heart 💛

This is a very Gentle™️ energy, most likely to be used in a familial relationship, friendship, or a romantic thing that’s moving into friendship territory. This emoji sees most action around Mother’s Day, conversations with your grandma, and other friendly and supportive figures.

Good for: New relationships where you want to show affection without fear of coming on too strong or when you’re sending to family members.

Bad for: Anyone you’ve ever seen naked or would like to see naked eventually.

For those in the know, the purple heart is considered a horny emoji. Thanks to Ty Dolla Sign’s “Purple Emoji,” this is now canon.

Alternatively, if you see this cropping up in a family group chat, it could be related to your grandpa’s Purple Heart. Thank you for your service, soldier. The two wildly different translations mean that the purple heart is chaotic. Use at your own risk.

Good for: Shamelessly booty-calling someone or a FWB situation.

Bad for: Anyone whose parents you’ve met.

A newer heart addition, the white heart looks clean, minimal, and, yeah, kinda sterile. At its best, it is a good, bland heart. This is far different from number 7, the heart outline emoji, as this one is a filled-in, dimensional white heart, making it way more, well…intentionally white.

As always, context is everything. At its worst, it can look like a graceless white privilege signifier. Just like how white people shouldn’t use dark skin tone emojis, using a white heart emoji, especially in any form of trying to show support for issues around Black lives, is…not it.

Good for: Showing support after the loss of a loved one or captioning ~aesthetic~ photos of decor along with some other monochrome black-and-white emoji palette.

Bad for: Showing support after the loss of a pet (IDK why, but red hearts are universally better for showing pet-related love) or talking about white privilege unironically.

5. 🤎 Brown Heart 🤎

This heart emoji should be reserved for Black and brown people. While a non-BIPOC might think sending this heart is a message of solidarity, it’s akin to using digital brownface or darker skin tone emojis when you’re actually a skin tone 1 person.

Good for: Any use by Black and brown people.

Bad for: Use by a white person to show solidarity with their Black and brown friends. Just do a classic red heart to show support.

6. ♥️ Flat Red Heart ♥️

While it might look similar to the classique red heart, the flat red heart is actually part of the suit of cards collection. The messaging is the same of the classic red heart but shows a bit of rushed use or infrequent heart emoji use or familiarity. No one should go for the flat red heart if they’re using the other colored heart emoji palette.

Good for: Sending the love and good feelings of the original red heart emoji when you can’t find it in a pinch.

Bad for: Use as a repeated substitute for the red heart emoji. This emoji should not have any place in your “frequently used” emoji tray.

7. ♡ Ariana Copy Paste Heart ♡

The outlined heart emoji is a bit more difficult to find (you’re likely to find it using your keyboard’s control + command + space bar function, but scrolling for it is another story). The outline heart mostly gets a lot of play as a copy-paste heart, meaning it’s v intentional…and as such, too intentional to be used willy-nilly.

Good for: Being Ariana Grande, aesthetic ~love~, being 21 and under, showing your friends how much you love them.

Bad for: Casual relationships or relationships you’re trying to seem casual about.

8. 🫀 Anatomical Heart 🫀

A newer heart addition to the emoji family as part of the 2020 update, the anatomical heart is the perfect combination of cute and creepy, for those who are into that sort of thing.

Good for: Med students or friends and lovers with a sense of humor.

Bad for: A new relationship, repeated substitution for a red heart, and parents or grandparents (they won’t get it).

While classically considered the most romantic heart, it’s also the most basic. It’s impressive only the first time you send or receive it. If a new partner is sending this to you, yes, it’s a statement, but if you’ve been dating for a few years and this is all you’re getting—they need to step it up.

This can also be considered a timeless, platonic-love, support emoji, acceptable to send and receive from anyone during times of grief or loss to show support.

Good for: The honeymoon phase of a new relationship or showing a platonic friend support.

Bad for: Following up after a first date.

This is the coward’s red heart. Usually deployed by partners whose fingers hover over the red heart but ultimately decide to send a noncommittal version instead. It’s too close to the red heart to be an accident and too random of a color otherwise to mean anything else.

Good for: Bullshit situationships.

Bad for: Anything beyond that.

A braggart’s heart. Your friend who volunteers uses this a lot. Despite being literally green, it doesn’t have to do with any environmental subtext, although the overlap of people who do good and love the environment is heavy.

This tends to speak more on the sender’s behalf than any relationship the sender has with the receiver. You’re likely to get this tacked on to the end of a “Hey, I know we haven’t spoken in a while, but—” text.

Good for: Acquaintances, people you know through mutual friends, and junior varsity friends.

Bad for: Anyone you wouldn’t accept on LinkedIn.

Most often used ironically, the black heart is a symbol of deep, embarrassing, romantic love. Like, Wow, you could completely crush my hopes and dreams in a millisecond because my heart is in your hands and that makes me feel not at ease at all! But it’s exciting!

Good for: Your soul mate or your twin flame.

Bad for: Someone you’re very casually dating.

Again, most often used ironically in an “I’m just giving you shit” way. To deploy a broken-heart emoji in a serious context is a little cringeworthy, as it could be seen as trying to milk guilt out of someone (and FWIW, a phone call is much better for that type of situation).

Good for: Giving your partner a hard time if they disappoint you (but a disappointment you’ll obviously live through—you just don’t want to let them off the hook quite yet).

Bad for: Truly expressing a broken heart or shattered expectations.

A fun, manic-energy heart with über-versatile application. Sprinkle this in with a casual or newish partner you love (but aren’t quite in love with yet), friends, family—it’s all good!

The excitement and giddiness of the exclamation point heart implies you genuinely like the other person’s company and are super excited to see them. There’s an immediacy to this emoji that makes it perfect to toss in when confirming plans.

Good for: Telling someone your ETA when you’re meeting up, signing off a “catching up” session, and setting date plans in place.

Bad for: Serious talks.

Two static pink hearts are super flirtatious. This is a good entry-level emoji to throw into the mix when you start dating someone. They also have great BFF energy. Very “you and I until the end of time and no one understands us” vibes.

Good for: Dating someone new you’re v into, flirty DM slides, and the constant jibber-jabber between you and your BFF.

Bad for: Someone you’re about to break up with or anyone who you can sense is into you more than you are them—rip off that Band-Aid.

This is the Mind-Meld heart—aka when you and someone else are on the same level about something and jinx each other.

Good for: Having a heavy talk via text, accepting an apology, forgiving someone, and apologizing to someone yourself.

Bad for: Platonic friendships—just send a red heart, omg.

You’re vibing, you appreciate the other person, and likely one of you just went on an emotional ledge (with good results)! This is a really good apology heart, no matter what end of the apology you’re on. It’s basically saying “all is forgiven” or “I understand and still accept you as you are.”

Good for: Apologies, confessions of love, and crushes.

Bad for: Platonic friendships—it’s just like a weird half-measure when a true red heart will do just as well.

Are you literally the Grinch? Because that is the only acceptable situation in which to use this. Some emoji scholars interpret this as a beating heart and therefore a complimentary emoji to send and receive. But unfortunately, they are wrong.

Good for: An apology tour after terrorizing Whoville.

Bad for: EVERY OTHER CONTEXT.

This is like the Neutral Good of heart emoji. It’s playful, cute, and twee enough that it doesn’t necessarily have heavy romantic implications. You can use this in pretty much any conversation to foster a sense of “I appreciate you” without being put on an emotional ledge.

Good for: Anything, honestly.

Bad for: Again, hard to go wrong here.

As one of the lesser-used symbols within the heart emoji taxonomy, seeing one of these means you kind of have to read into the meaning of it. Therefore, send with caution, as it likely will be scrutinized by the receiver.

While traditionalists would believe it’s just a symbol of new love, the reality is that there are so many other heart emoji to symbolize new love that this one gets forgotten.

Good for: Your long-term S.O. of several years where truly nothing is new anymore.

Bad for: That platonic friend you’ve always thought was kind of cute.