Emoji Skin Tones

Skin tones are not separate emojis. Each one is the base emoji followed by a Fitzpatrick modifier, five characters added in Unicode 8.0 (2015) and based on the Fitzpatrick scale dermatologists use to classify how skin responds to sunlight. Your device joins the two characters and draws a single glyph.

That is why a skin-toned emoji sometimes arrives as two characters side by side — a plain yellow hand followed by a coloured square. The receiving app simply did not join them. Nothing was lost in transit, and the text is still correct.

Only emojis showing human skin take a modifier: hands, faces with bodies, people and body parts. A smiley face does not, which is why 🙂 stays yellow everywhere. Where an emoji shows two people, each person can carry a different tone, which is why couple and handshake emojis have far more combinations than five.