Guide
Understanding presence: online, away, and Appear offline
The three states everyone else sees
A green dot means you're actively connected. An amber "Away" state appears if your connection drops or your session goes quiet for a few minutes; you haven't left, but your presence is stale, and you're removed from the lobby entirely once you've been away for more than five minutes. This is automatic and needs nothing from you. It's just an honest reflection of your connection, not a status you set yourself. The third state is offline: you're not connected, or you've turned on Appear offline (below).
Turning on Appear offline
Open Edit profile (tap your profile at the top of the lobby) and switch on "Appear offline" under Privacy and contact. From that moment you're shown as offline everywhere someone might look for you: the lobby list, the online count, your profile, and your friends' view of you. You can keep browsing and chatting completely normally while it's on, and turn it back off whenever you like. Nothing about the toggle is permanent, and switching it on and off repeatedly has no side effects.
What it doesn't hide
This is the part worth understanding before you rely on it. Appear offline hides passive presence, not active participation. If you're already in a conversation with someone, they can still see your read receipt when you open their message, see when you're typing, and receive your replies instantly. None of that pauses just because your status shows offline. Posting in the public lobby chat is also visible to everyone there regardless of the toggle. Nobody can tell you're online from a glance at a status dot, but anyone you're already talking to can tell you're there from what you're doing. Appear offline doesn't stop call requests either; to stop those, turn off "Allow call requests" in Edit profile (see the audio calls guide).
When it's the right tool, and when it isn't
Appear offline is built for browsing the lobby without getting messaged, or for stepping away from notifications without formally signing out. It's the wrong tool if what you want is to hide from someone you're mid-conversation with. For that, blocking is the real mechanism; see our safety guide. And if you're specifically trying to browse without showing up to friends, our friends guide covers how your online status factors into that relationship too.
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