Trench coat, hat pulled low, magnifying glass optional — the detective emoji is Sherlock Holmes energy distilled into one figure. It's used for playful sleuthing, 'investigating' a friend's cryptic story, or piecing together gossip like it's a case file.
What 🕵️ means
Depicted here is a private investigator/detective with a hat on and holding a magnifying glass to his eye; a look popularized by the fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes. This emoji usually tells the recipient that detective-like skills and intelligence were used to craft something or figure something out.
On some platforms, however, the magnifying glass is replaced by a pair of sunglasses.
How and when to use it
- When you put pieces together and finally figure something out, 🕵does the job of conveying that very well.
- 🕵 can also be used to describe someone else’s detective-like behavior that you’re impressed by.
- When you’re on to people about something you suspect, you can use 🕵 to tell them that you are.
- 🕵 can be used as an instruction to read into your messages more carefully to decipher what you had intended.
- You can also use 🕵 to create a sense of adventure as an invitation to solve a mystery.
Other names
- 🕵 Investigator
- 🕵 Private Eye
- 🕵 Spy
- 🕵 Sherlock
- 🕵 Mystery
- 🕵 Investigation
- 🕵 Smart
- 🕵 Crime solving
- 🕵 Searching
- 🕵 Focus
- 🕵 Magnifying glass
- 🕵️ Sleuth
- 🕵️ Man Sleuth
- 🕵️ Find
The lowdown
- Category
- People & Body › person-role
- Codepoints
U+1F575 U+FE0F- Emoji version
- Emoji 0.7
- Shortcodes
:detective:GitHub- Keywords
- detective, sleuth, spy
How it looks across platforms
Seeing a blank box instead of the emoji somewhere? Here's why that happens. Curious why the designs above don't match to begin with? Here's why that happens too.
Skin tone variations
⚡ Quick round
Which joined the keyboard first — 🕵️ Detective or 🧑🩰 Ballet Dancer?