Daily Archives: July 6, 2020

Hide Online Status for only some Facebook Friends

How to hide online status on Facebook?

People can choose their activity status on social media. It is part of everyone’s privacy to select who can see them online and who don’t have to see them active. However, it is not an option on some of the social media, but Facebook as one of the top social media has made this option for its users.

Woman showing a Facebook icon

How to hide online status on Facebook?

It might have happened for you that you wanted to hide online status on Facebook. Though, you can hide online status either for your entire contact list or for the specific persons/list. So, there are three options for you: hide online status for contacts, a list you have already made, or particular persons.

  • If you want to hide online status for all contacts, you should open your Facebook, on the right side you can see the chat Option. Click on the chat Option, and click on Turn Off Active Status. It opens a window for you, click on the first option. Turn off Active Status for All Contacts.
  • If you want to hide online status for only some friends, you should create a list first. To create a list, you should go to the Facebook home page. On the left side, you see a list. Click on the Friend Lists, if you don’t see it, click on the see more, the lists would expand. Once you click on the friend lists, you can see different listings of friends, to create a new list click on the Create List and type the name of friends you want to add.
  • Now, to hide online status for only some contacts, go again to the Facebook homepage, click on the chat option on the right side. Click on Turn Off Active Status; a menu would open for you. Click on the last option “Turn off active status for only some contacts.” In this part, you can type in the name of specific persons, or you can type in the name of the list you had created. Both of them works. You can even type in the name of a friend list and some of the friends there, once you click on Okay your online status would be hidden for those you have selected.

However, once you hide your activity status, you also won’t be able to see that person online status, and it automatically turns off for you too. To unhide online status, you go to the chat setting, click on the Turn Off Active Status and remove the names from the menu.

How to hide online status on Facebook mobile?

If you are using your smart phone, and you want to turn the status off, unfortunately there is no option on Facebook mobile to turn the online status off. Instead, you should go to the Facebook messenger, and turn the online status off from there, or you back to the Facebook on desktop and change the setting there only.

Whatever your setting is on the Facebook desktop, it will be on the Facebook mobile app too. For example, if you have changed the status online for some of the contacts you have, your online status will not be shown when you are using the mobile app, or even the messenger.

So, if you want to do some basic changes, you should follow the first section in this blog. To turn the active status on or off for the short period, you can read the following.

How to hide online status on Facebook messenger ?

Turning off the activity status on Facebook is easy, and with a few clicks you can turn it off.

To turn off the activity status off on Facebook messenger:

  1. Open Facebook messenger or Facebook mobile app
  2. Login to your account and you would see the home page (if you login with Facebook mobile app)
  3. From home, you should see the messenger icon (you should have installed it on mobile). Tap on messenger icon

4. Tap on your profile picture on top left of messenger app

5. You can see the setting menu, tap on active status and right from there you should the status is on or off.

6. Tap on the button to switch the active status off

7. Confirm the action by tapping on “Turn Off” and it will stop showing you are online

Facebook active status keeps turning on by itself

It might happen for you to see that online Facebook status keeps turning on, and even you turn it off after a while, you see that it goes back to the online status. It is annoying once you want to hide your active status there. However, it is not Facebook bugs, and there are some reasons why Facebook keeps turning on online status.

Reasons why Facebook status keeps turning on and how to fix:

  • Once Facebook app or messenger updates the online status will reset, and it backs to the default (online status).
  • You should turn the status off on the Facebook app or Facebook desktop, as it is explained above.

Go to the phone setting and turn off the automatic update apps. So, Facebook and messenger apps won’t update automatically.

How accurate is active now on Facebook?

It might happen for you to message someone on Facebook, and you get no reply from them at all. You think they are online, and after a few minutes, you say they go offline without replying to your message. If you later on, ask your friends, they say that they were not online! Yes. Online status on Facebook is not accurate, and it depends on many things.

If you want to be offline, you better:

  • Log out of your account on the desktop
  • Close the Facebook app, or log out
  • Turn off active status on messenger (because you cannot log out of messenger) or close the app on the phone. If you keep the app open, it might show your status online fro friends.

All in all

Facebook has fewer bugs compared to Instagram, but if you stuck somewhere using Facebook, you could quickly fix it. Please note that to turn active status off, you should do for all messenger, Facebook app, and Facebook on desktop.