---
title: "Animated Waving Hand Emoji 👋 Using CSS"
date: 2019-04-17 14:20:10-0400
description: "How to make the 👋 waving hand emoji actually wave using pure CSS animation!"
tags:
  - CSS
  - Animation
  - Emoji
  - Keyframes
  - Cool Tricks
image: "/static/images/notes/css-waving-hand-emoji/codepen.png"
---

## Howdy, friends! 👋

If you examine [my homepage](/) long enough, you might notice the 👋 hand emoji at the top subtly waving at you. This was easily accomplished using a few lines of CSS with a feature called [`@keyframes`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@keyframes) — no bulky GIFs involved, and no JS mess or jQuery overkill required.

Below are the code snippets you can grab and customize to make your own ["waving hand" 👋](https://emojipedia.org/waving-hand-sign/) emojis **_actually wave_**, and a [CodePen playground](https://codepen.io/jakejarvis/pen/pBZWZw) for live testing.

## Demo

<iframe
  height="500"
  width="100%"
  src="https://codepen.io/jakejarvis/embed/pBZWZw/?theme-id=light&amp;default-tab=css,result"
  scrolling="no"
></iframe>

## CSS

{/* prettier-ignore */}
```css
.wave {
  animation-name: wave-animation;  /* Refers to the name of your @keyframes element below */
  animation-duration: 2.5s;        /* Change to speed up or slow down */
  animation-iteration-count: infinite;  /* Never stop waving :) */
  transform-origin: 70% 70%;       /* Pivot around the bottom-left palm */
  display: inline-block;
}

@keyframes wave-animation {
    0% { transform: rotate( 0.0deg) }
   10% { transform: rotate(14.0deg) }  /* The following five values can be played with to make the waving more or less extreme */
   20% { transform: rotate(-8.0deg) }
   30% { transform: rotate(14.0deg) }
   40% { transform: rotate(-4.0deg) }
   50% { transform: rotate(10.0deg) }
   60% { transform: rotate( 0.0deg) }  /* Reset for the last half to pause */
  100% { transform: rotate( 0.0deg) }
}
```

## HTML

```html
<h1>Hi there! <span class="wave">👋</span></h1>
```

---

That's it! More hands and skin tones can be [found on 📕 Emojipedia](https://emojipedia.org/search/?q=waving+hand).

**👋🏼 Toodles!**