Hand heart

A hand heart is a gesture in which a person forms a heart shape using their fingers.

The "hand heart" is typically formed by one using both thumbs to form the bottom of the heart, while bending the remaining fingers and having them connect at the fingernails in order to form a heart shape. However, in recent years, the practice has evolved to include people using the index and middle fingers to form the heart, as opposed to using the entire hand.

Often, two people will each form half of a heart, conjoining the two as a sign of affection.

The upside down hand heart gesture was noted in art in 1989, when Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan created an art image of the gesture as his first artwork named Family Syntax. The gesture became popular in the early 2010s. This gesture was added to Unicode 14.0 and Emoji 14.0 in 2021 with code point.

Google patent
Google filed a patent in July 2011 that allowed Google Glass users to use the hand heart in front of an object to cause the gadget to automatically recognise the object, take a picture, and send it to social networks as a "liked" image.