You’ve seen it. It’s that stripped-back, minimalist icon that looks like it belongs on a 90s skater t-shirt or a dusty fax machine. While everyone else is busy arguing over whether the "melting face" or the "sparkles" emoji is the best way to express existential dread, the black and white smiley face emoji just sits there. It’s quiet. It’s retro. It’s also surprisingly complicated when you actually dig into why it exists in a world of 3,000+ high-definition, 3D-rendered icons.
Most people don't even realize they have it.
They scroll past the yellow faces, past the animals, past the flags, and eventually hit that weird monochrome section at the end of the "Symbols" tab. There it is. ☻. Or maybe ☺. It’s not just a "basic" version of the yellow guy. It’s a specific Unicode character with a history that predates your first smartphone by decades.
Where did the black and white smiley face emoji actually come from?
It isn't a modern invention. Seriously. We aren't talking about a "dark mode" skin for the standard emoji set. The roots of these specific characters—Unicode U+263A (the white smiling face) and U+263B (the black smiling face)—go back to the early days of computing.
Specifically, look at Code Page 437.
If you were around for the IBM PC in 1981, you might remember these characters being part of the hardware’s built-in character set. Back then, you didn't have "emojis" in the way we think of them now. You had characters. These smileys were used in early DOS games and BBS (Bulletin Board System) chats because they were efficient. They took up exactly one byte of space. In an era where every kilobyte of memory was a precious commodity, a one-byte smile was a feat of engineering.
When the Unicode Standard was established in the early 90s to unify how computers represent text, they brought these legacy characters along for the ride. They were "grandfathered" in. This is why, even today, your iPhone or Android device carries these ancient digital artifacts alongside a taco and a hyper-realistic brain.
It’s a vibe, not just a symbol
Why do people use it now?
Style.
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Honestly, the standard yellow emoji has become a bit... loud. It’s expressive, sure, but it carries a lot of baggage. Using a yellow smiley can sometimes feel sarcastic, or "boomer," or just a bit too much. The black and white smiley face emoji, on the other hand, feels intentional. It’s "aesthetic."
If you browse through niche corners of Instagram or Pinterest—especially within the "vaporwave" or "soft grunge" communities—you'll see the ☻ everywhere. It’s a shorthand for a specific kind of detached coolness. It says, "I'm happy, but I'm not screaming about it." It’s the digital equivalent of a minimalist line-art tattoo.
There’s also the "glitch" factor. Because these are text characters rather than image-based emojis, they look different depending on the font and the screen. Sometimes the "white" smiley is just an outline. Sometimes the "black" smiley has white eyes. That unpredictability is part of the charm for people who are tired of the polished, corporate look of Apple or Google’s emoji sets.
The technical weirdness of Unicode smileys
Here is something most people get wrong: they think these are just "alternate skins."
They aren't.
Technically, when you send a standard yellow smiley (U+1F642), your phone looks at that code and says, "Okay, show the picture of the yellow face I have stored in my memory." But when you use the black and white smiley face emoji, you are using a character that lives in the "Miscellaneous Symbols" block of Unicode.
It’s closer to a letter of the alphabet than it is to a sticker.
- U+263A ☺ is officially the "White Smiling Face."
- U+263B ☻ is the "Black Smiling Face."
- U+2639 ☹ is the "White Frowning Face."
Notice the naming convention. In Unicode-speak, "white" doesn't mean the color white; it usually means "outline." "Black" means "filled in."
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This creates some hilarious cross-platform confusion. On an old Windows machine, ☻ might look like a solid black circle with two tiny white dots for eyes. On a modern MacBook, it might be rendered as a glossy 3D icon because Apple decided to "map" that old character to a new image. It’s a mess. But it’s a beautiful, chaotic mess that keeps the internet’s typography interesting.
Why the "Happy Face" logo is different
We have to talk about Harvey Ball.
People often confuse the black and white smiley face emoji with the classic "Smiley" brand logo. You know the one—the yellow circle with the oval eyes and the slightly off-center mouth. That logo was designed in 1963 by Harvey Ball for a life insurance company. It was meant to boost employee morale.
The emoji we use today is a descendant of that, but the monochrome versions are more like its punk-rock cousins. They stripped away the yellow. They stripped away the commercialism. By going black and white, the symbol becomes universal again. It stops being a "brand" and starts being a piece of punctuation.
How to actually use them (without looking like a bot)
If you want to incorporate these into your digital life, don't overthink it.
The black and white smiley face emoji works best when it replaces a period at the end of a short sentence. It’s great for bios. It’s perfect for captions where you want the focus to remain on the photo, not a bright yellow icon that draws the eye away.
- Copy-Paste is your friend. Most mobile keyboards hide these. You usually have to go to a site like Emojipedia or use a "Symbols" keyboard app to find them quickly.
- Check the rendering. Send it to yourself first. See if it looks like a cool minimalist icon or a weird blocky glitch.
- Mix with text. These look better when surrounded by clean, sans-serif fonts.
Don't use them in professional emails unless you work in a creative field. While the standard smiley is widely accepted now, the monochrome version can still come across as "internet-y" or informal. It’s a stylistic choice, and like all stylistic choices, it sends a message.
The future of monochrome icons
Are we going back to basics?
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Kinda.
As "digital minimalism" becomes more popular, we’re seeing a shift away from high-stimulation interfaces. People are turning their phone screens to grayscale to reduce dopamine spikes. In that environment, the black and white smiley face emoji is the only one that still looks "right."
It’s also about accessibility. High-contrast symbols are often easier for people with certain visual impairments to distinguish than complex, multi-colored emojis. While Unicode continues to add hundreds of new emojis every year—we have a "potted plant" and a "disco ball" now—the core set of symbols remains the foundation.
The ☻ isn't going anywhere. It survived the transition from 8-bit computers to the smartphone revolution. It’ll probably still be here when we’re all sending emojis via neural implants.
Next Steps for the Emoji Obsessed
If you want to dive deeper into the world of non-standard symbols, start by exploring the Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols block in Unicode. This is where people find the "fancy" fonts for their social media names. Just be careful—overusing these can break screen readers for people with disabilities.
If you just want the black and white smiley face emoji, the easiest way is to add a "Symbols" keyboard to your phone settings. On iOS, you can find many of these under the "Japanese (Kana)" keyboard under the "123" and then the "smiley" button. It’s a bit of a trek, but it’s worth it for that perfect, understated look.
Check your favorite apps to see how they render U+263B. You might be surprised to find that your "retro" smiley looks completely different on Slack than it does on Twitter. Consistency is a myth in the world of Unicode, and that's exactly why it's fun.