Windows Alt Codes for ♥ ☺ ♪, and Why Alt + Number Can't Type 😀

Holding Alt and typing a number on the keypad gives you text symbols such as ♥ (Alt + 3), ☺ (Alt + 1) and ♪ (Alt + 13), but it can never give you a colour emoji like 😀. Alt codes only reach the 256 characters of an old single byte code page, and no emoji lives in any of those slots. For real emoji on Windows, press the Windows key and the period key to open the emoji panel, or type a code point in Word and press Alt + X.

That is the short answer. The longer one is more useful, because ten of the 31 classic low Alt codes produce a character that does have a colour emoji twin, and that explains why a ♥ you typed sometimes shows up red on someone else's phone.

Where Alt codes come from, and why they stop at 256

The trick dates back to DOS. On the original IBM PC, the character set was code page 437, and holding Alt while typing a number on the numeric keypad inserted the character at that position. Positions 1 to 31 were officially control codes, but the PC drew a little picture for each of them instead: faces, card suits, music notes, arrows.

Windows kept the habit for compatibility. Wikipedia's article on code page 437 (checked 22 October 2026) records that Microsoft later added a second form: put a 0 in front of the digits and you get a character from the Windows character set rather than the DOS one. So Alt + 3 and Alt + 03 are not the same request.

Both forms have the same ceiling. A single byte code page holds 256 positions, and that is all an Alt code can address. Microsoft's own instructions talk about entering a four digit code, which tells you the scale of what this system was built for.

All 31 low Alt codes, with their Unicode code points

We built this list from the code page 437 table and then checked every code point against our emoji catalog, built directly from the Emoji 18.0 data files Unicode publishes. "Emoji twin" means the same character becomes a colour emoji when the invisible variation selector U+FE0F follows it. "Text only" means Unicode lists no emoji form for that character at all.

• Alt + 1: ☺ (U+263A), emoji twin ☺️ smiling face
• Alt + 2: ☻ (U+263B), text only
• Alt + 3: ♥ (U+2665), emoji twin ♥️ heart suit
• Alt + 4: ♦ (U+2666), emoji twin ♦️ diamond suit
• Alt + 5: ♣ (U+2663), emoji twin ♣️ club suit
• Alt + 6: ♠ (U+2660), emoji twin ♠️ spade suit
• Alt + 7: • (U+2022), text only
• Alt + 8: ◘ (U+25D8), text only
• Alt + 9: ○ (U+25CB), text only
• Alt + 10: ◙ (U+25D9), text only
• Alt + 11: ♂ (U+2642), emoji twin ♂️ male sign
• Alt + 12: ♀ (U+2640), emoji twin ♀️ female sign
• Alt + 13: ♪ (U+266A), text only
• Alt + 14: ♫ (U+266B), text only
• Alt + 15: ☼ (U+263C), text only
• Alt + 16: ► (U+25BA), text only
• Alt + 17: ◄ (U+25C4), text only
• Alt + 18: ↕ (U+2195), emoji twin ↕️ up-down arrow
• Alt + 19: ‼ (U+203C), emoji twin ‼️ double exclamation mark
• Alt + 20: ¶ (U+00B6), text only
• Alt + 21: § (U+00A7), text only
• Alt + 22: ▬ (U+25AC), text only
• Alt + 23: ↨ (U+21A8), text only
• Alt + 24: ↑ (U+2191), text only
• Alt + 25: ↓ (U+2193), text only
• Alt + 26: → (U+2192), text only
• Alt + 27: ← (U+2190), text only
• Alt + 28: ∟ (U+221F), text only
• Alt + 29: ↔ (U+2194), emoji twin ↔️ left-right arrow
• Alt + 30: ▲ (U+25B2), text only
• Alt + 31: ▼ (U+25BC), text only

Every one of these 31 characters dates from Unicode 1.1 (1993), according to the Unicode Character Database age data we keep in the repo. They were in Unicode long before anyone was thinking about emoji, which is exactly why most of them never became one.

The ten that have a colour twin

Ten of the 31 low codes produce a character that Unicode also lists as an emoji: ☺ ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ ♂ ♀ ↕ ‼ and ↔. Eight of them were in Unicode's first emoji batch, labelled Emoji 0.6 (2010) in the official emoji-test.txt file. The gender signs ♂ and ♀ joined later, in Emoji 4.0 (2016), when Unicode added them for use in gendered emoji sequences.

Your Alt code types only the bare character, without U+FE0F. What the reader sees then depends on their software. Some apps and fonts draw a bare ♥ as a flat black symbol; others decide it should be the red heart suit emoji anyway. So a message you sent looking plain may arrive looking colourful on a friend's screen. Our heart symbols guide goes deeper into the selector characters themselves, and the heart emoji collection has every red, pink and coloured version if you want one on purpose.

Note that ♥ is not the classic red heart ❤️. That emoji is U+2764, a different character with no low Alt code. The card suit and the love heart look alike but are separate entries in Unicode, and only the suit is reachable from Alt + 3.

Where to copy them instead

If you want the suits, our card symbols set has them in both filled and outline versions. The gender signs are on the gender symbols page, and ☺ in both its text and emoji forms has its own page as smiling face.

Near misses: Alt symbols that look like emoji but are not

The other 21 are more interesting than they first appear, because several sit one code point away from a real emoji that looks almost the same. When people complain that an Alt code "should" be an emoji, these are usually the ones.

• ► and ◄ (Alt + 16, Alt + 17) are U+25BA and U+25C4, the pointer shapes. The emoji versions ▶️ and ◀️ are U+25B6 and U+25C0, play and reverse buttons. Same idea, different characters.
• ☼ (Alt + 15) is U+263C, a sun drawn with rays. The sun emoji ☀️ is U+2600, and only that one has an emoji form.
• ♪ and ♫ (Alt + 13, Alt + 14) are text only. The emoji 🎵 and 🎶 are separate characters in a much higher range.
• ↑ ↓ → ← (Alt + 24 to Alt + 27) are text only. The arrow emoji ⬆️ ⬇️ ➡️ ⬅️ live at other code points. Oddly, the two double-headed arrows ↕ and ↔ did get emoji forms while these four did not.
• ▲ and ▼ (Alt + 30, Alt + 31) are text only. The closest emoji are 🔼 🔽 and the red 🔺 🔻.
• ○ (Alt + 9) is text only; the emoji circle is ⚪.

For the full spread of arrow characters, see our arrow symbols, and for notes, music note symbols. The check, arrow and star symbols post explains which of those render as emoji in which apps.

The Alt + 0 codes: © ® ™ and very little else

Codes with a leading zero use the Windows character set instead of the DOS one. Microsoft's keyboard tips page lists sixteen examples, among them Alt + 0169 for ©, Alt + 0174 for ® and Alt + 0153 for ™, plus section, pilcrow, dagger and currency signs.

We ran the upper half of that character set, positions 128 to 255, through our emoji catalog. Exactly three of those 128 have an emoji twin: ©, ® and ™. Everything else, the accented letters, the currency signs, the quotation marks, is text only. Those three are on our copyright symbols page if you prefer copying.

We also checked the DOS set above the low range, positions 32 to 255. None of those 224 characters is an emoji. That range includes the digits and the # and * signs, which are the starting points for keycap emoji like #️⃣, but a keycap needs two more invisible characters after the digit, and an Alt code can only ever insert one.

Why 😀 has no Alt code, and never will

😀 is code point U+1F600. In decimal that is 128,512. A code page has 256 slots. The numbers do not overlap, and no Windows code page puts an emoji in one of its slots, so there is no position for an Alt code to point at.

Many emoji are also longer than one character. A keycap takes three code points. Every country flag is a pair of regional indicators. Family and job emoji often chain five or more characters with joiners. Even a system that could reach every code point one keystroke combination at a time would struggle with those. That is why the emoji panel works by picture, not by number.

If you are curious what any emoji is made of, paste it into our emoji to Unicode converter. It shows each code point, the UTF-8 bytes and the escape sequences, which also makes plain why an Alt code could never hold it.

What does type colour emoji: the emoji panel

Microsoft's keyboard tips page gives the shortcut directly: during text entry, press Windows + . (period) and the emoji keyboard appears. You can click an emoji or keep typing to search. On Windows 11 the same panel also offers GIFs and kaomoji, and a Symbols section, which is the easiest way to reach many of the text symbols in this article without remembering a number.

The panel draws from Windows' own emoji font, so what it offers depends on your Windows version. Microsoft began rolling out Emoji 17.0 support to Windows 11 from 27 August 2026, through a Release Preview update ahead of the 26H2 release; our Windows 11 26H2 emoji update page lists what arrived. The Windows emoji page shows how the current designs look.

Our step by step emoji typing guide walks through the panel alongside the shortcuts for Mac, Chromebook, Linux and phones, and the older post on typing emojis on every device covers app keyboards too.

Word's Alt + X: typing by code point

Office has a method that does reach the whole of Unicode. Microsoft's help page on inserting Unicode characters puts it plainly: type the character code, press Alt, then press X. Its own example is 0024 followed by Alt + X, which gives a dollar sign.

For emoji, type the hex code without the U+ prefix. 1F600 then Alt + X gives 😀. 2665 then Alt + X gives the same ♥ that Alt + 3 does, which is a nice way to see that both roads lead to one character.

Two caveats from the same Microsoft page. If the letters before your code get swallowed into it, select just the code before pressing Alt + X, or type U+ in front of it. And some Office programs, PowerPoint and InfoPath among them, cannot convert codes this way; Microsoft suggests Character Map there instead.

No numeric keypad on your laptop

This is the most common reason Alt codes "stop working". Microsoft is explicit that entering Alt codes only works with the numeric keypad, not the row of numbers above the letters. Its Office help adds that NUM LOCK has to be on if your keyboard needs it to type numbers from the keypad.

If your laptop has no keypad, Windows' On-Screen Keyboard can supply one. Microsoft's instructions: on Windows 11 go to Settings, Accessibility, Keyboard and turn on the On-Screen Keyboard toggle (on Windows 10 it is Settings, Ease of Access, Keyboard). With the keyboard open, select the Options key and choose Turn on numeric keypad. That gives you an on-screen keypad to enter the digits.

Honestly, though, a laptop owner is better served by the emoji panel for emoji and by copying for symbols. The On-Screen Keyboard route works, but it is slow, and the panel's Symbols section on Windows 11 needs no keypad at all.

Which method we would use for each job

• A heart, suit or arrow you type every day: learn the Alt code. Alt + 3 is faster than any menu once your fingers know it.
• Any colour emoji: the Windows + . panel. Nothing else on Windows is as direct.
• An exact character in a Word document: the code point and Alt + X, especially when you need one specific arrow or heart and not its lookalike.
• Something rare, once: copy it from our symbol collections and move on.

One warning if you use the ten codes with emoji twins in usernames, bios or game names. You cannot control whether the reader's device shows the plain symbol or the colour emoji, so check the result on another phone before you commit to it. The other 21 will look like text everywhere, which is often exactly what you want.

Sources we checked for this guide

All pages below were read on 22 October 2026.

• Microsoft, Windows keyboard tips and tricks (emoji panel shortcut, Alt code steps, the sixteen Alt + 0 examples, numeric keypad requirement): support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-keyboard-tips-and-tricks-588e0b72-0fff-6d3f-aeee-6e5116097942
• Microsoft Office support, the article on inserting ASCII and Unicode characters (Alt + X method, NUM LOCK note, programs that cannot convert): support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/insert-ascii-or-unicode-latin-based-symbols-and-characters-d13f58d3-7bcb-44a7-a4d5-972ee12e50e0
• Microsoft, Use the On-Screen Keyboard (OSK) to type (settings paths, numeric keypad option): support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/use-the-on-screen-keyboard-osk-to-type-ecbb5e08-5b4e-d8c8-f794-81dbf896267a
• Wikipedia, Code page 437 (glyphs and code points for positions 1 to 31, history of Alt entry): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437
• Unicode, emoji-test.txt and emoji-data.txt for Emoji 18.0, and DerivedAge.txt, which our catalog and age data are generated from.