Emoji Code Lookup — Get the Code for Any Emoji in Seconds

Emojis have moved well beyond casual messaging. They appear in UI design, marketing copy, documentation, and product interfaces. But when you actually need to use one in code — as an HTML entity, a CSS content value, or a Unicode escape in JavaScript — the information is surprisingly scattered. The Emoji Code Lookup puts everything in one place.

What you get for each emoji

Click or search for any emoji and the tool shows:

• Unicode code point(s) — e.g. U+1F600 for 😀, or a sequence like U+1F1FA U+1F1F8 for 🇺🇸
• HTML entity — 😀 (decimal) and 😀 (hex) — copy-paste ready for HTML
• CSS content value — \1F600 — for use in ::before/::after pseudo-elements
• JavaScript escape — 😀 (surrogate pair) or \u{1F600} (ES6 style)
• Shortcode — :grinning: — the format used in Slack, GitHub, and many CMSes
• Unicode name — the official name from the Unicode Emoji data files
• Category and subcategory — e.g. "Smileys & Emotion / face-smiling"

Each value has a one-click copy button.

Browsing by category

The visual grid lets you browse all ~3,700 emoji in the current Unicode standard, organised into the standard categories: Smileys & Emotion, People & Body, Animals & Nature, Food & Drink, Travel & Places, Activities, Objects, Symbols, and Flags. The category filter makes it easy to find an emoji when you know roughly what kind you want but don't know the name.

Why you'd need emoji codes

HTML and email templates

Pasting an emoji character directly into HTML is usually fine for web pages, but email clients — especially older Outlook versions — can have trouble with multi-byte Unicode characters. Using the decimal HTML entity (😀) is safer and more widely supported across email clients.

CSS pseudo-elements

Adding an emoji to a CSS ::before pseudo-element requires the Unicode value in CSS escape format. For 🎉, that's content: "\1F389". Getting this wrong (using the decimal value, or forgetting the backslash) silently shows nothing or garbage.

JavaScript strings

Emoji characters outside the Basic Multilingual Plane (code points above U+FFFF) require surrogate pairs in older JavaScript string handling. The tool shows both the surrogate pair form and the modern \u{...} ES6 form so you can use whichever is appropriate for your target environment.

Shortcodes for CMSes and Markdown

GitHub, Slack, Notion, and many Markdown processors support emoji shortcodes like :tada:. The tool shows the standard shortcode so you don't have to guess the right name — :celebration: won't work; :tada: will.

Filtering out emoji in text processing

If you need to filter, replace, or process emoji in a string programmatically, knowing the Unicode code point range helps you write the right regex. You can look up the first and last code point in a category to bound your pattern.