What is a poke on Facebook, and what does it mean?

A poke is a one-tap nudge you send to a Facebook friend. You press the poke button, they get a notification saying you poked them, and that's all: no message, no text, no emoji. Facebook doesn't define what a poke means. Its Help Center only explains how pokes work, so the meaning comes from who sent it and why.

Pokes are still part of Facebook in 2026. The feature is one of the oldest on the site, dating from its first years in the mid-2000s, and since 2024 Meta has been making it easier to find again, adding a poke button on profiles and a running poke count between friends.

Read a poke the way you'd read a wave from across a room. The same gesture means different things from different people, so start with who sent it.

Between people who already talk every day, pokes are mostly a game. Each side pokes back until someone gives up, and Facebook now keeps score (more on poke counts below).

Facebook's Help Center says people can poke their friends, so pokes are for people already on your friends list. There are two ways in. Layouts differ between the app, the website and older app versions, so the button may not sit exactly where described here.

From their profile

1. Open the profile of the friend you want to poke.
2. Tap the poke button below their name. Facebook added this dedicated button in 2025, so an out-of-date app may not show it.
3. That's it. They get a notification that you poked them.

From the Pokes page

1. Tap or click the Facebook search bar, type “pokes” and open Pokes. On a computer you can also go straight to facebook.com/pokes.
2. Search for the friend you want to poke.
3. Tap Poke next to their name.

If you poke someone and they don't poke back, Facebook makes you wait 24 hours before you can poke them again. That limit stops a one-sided poker from filling someone's notifications.

Each poke you receive arrives as a notification. To see every friend who has poked you and poke them back, open the Pokes page: search “pokes” in Facebook, or visit facebook.com/pokes on a computer.

Dismissing clears a poke without returning it. Facebook describes it as the way to delete your poke history with that friend.

1. Open the Pokes page.
2. Under Friends who poked you, find the person.
3. In the app, tap and hold their name, then tap Dismiss poke.
4. To clear several at once, use Select all and dismiss them together.

Tip: You never owe anyone a poke back. Leaving one unanswered is a complete reply, and the Help Center doesn't mention the sender being told when you dismiss.

If someone keeps poking you and you'd like it to stop, Facebook's Help Center says you can block them. Blocking also stops them seeing what you post on your profile and starting a conversation with you, so it's a bigger step than a few pokes may deserve. If the pokes are part of a pattern of unwanted contact, report the profile as well.

In September 2025 Facebook gave pokes a scoreboard. Alongside the new poke button on profiles, you now get a poke count with each friend. It goes up every time the two of you poke each other, and as it grows, icons appear next to that friend's name, such as a fire emoji or “100”. Facebook's Help Center calls reaching these levels milestones.

In practice it works like a streak. Two friends who poke back and forth every day build a bigger number, and the icon is the reward. Because Facebook describes dismissing a poke as deleting your poke history with that friend, don't dismiss a run you want to keep.

The poke goes back to Facebook's early college-network days. It never came with an instruction manual, which is a big part of why it lasted: people used it to flirt, to say hi, to annoy their friends, and to keep up poke wars that only ended when one side got bored.

In late 2012 Facebook also released a separate app called Poke, for photos and messages that vanished a few seconds after they were opened. It never caught on, and Facebook withdrew it in 2014. That app and the poke button are different things, and only the button survived.

For years after that, the poke was easy to forget: it still worked, but you had to know where to look. Then Meta began pushing it again. In March 2024 it made the Pokes page easier to find through search and made it easier to poke a friend straight after searching for them. Meta said poking jumped 13-fold in the month after those changes. The profile button and poke counts followed in September 2025.

• Someone has asked you to leave them alone. A poke is still contact, even without words, so don't send one.
• You're chasing a reply. Poking someone who hasn't answered your message reads as pressure, not charm.
• It's a work contact. Pokes are casual, and a poke to a manager or a client tends to land as odd rather than friendly.
• It's right after a breakup. A poke from an ex is rarely neutral. If you want to talk, write a message; if you don't, leave it.
• They never poke back. One unanswered poke is fine. A string of them, each 24 hours apart, says more about you than you'd like.

Facebook enforces none of this beyond the 24-hour wait and the option to block. It's simply how pokes tend to be read by the person on the other end.

Pokes are a personal-profile feature. Facebook's Help Center describes them as something friends send each other, and a Page has followers rather than friends, so nothing in the help article suggests a business can poke its customers or the other way round.

If you run a Page, the ways to get someone's attention are posts, replies to comments and Messenger. Messenger has its own rule: a Page can message a person only within 24 hours of that person's last message, and a poke does nothing to open that window.