A person looking at Steam on a Windows laptop.
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You lot've had a long 24-hour interval, and you only want to play a game by yourself to relax. Your friends have other plans, however — they see you're online, and they want to chat! Fortunately, Steam makes it possible to hide your status. Here'due south how to do it.

What Setting Your Condition to Offline Does

Steam includes a variety of social functions, including chat and the ability to run into what games your friends are playing. It's handy, and it makes joining upward with your friends in multiplayer games a breeze.

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If you don't want to participate, you lot can ready your status to offline. Setting your status to offline completely disables all of the social functions Valve built into Steam — y'all will not be able to transport or receive messages, use voice chat, bring together (or be joined by) your friends in multiplayer games using Steam, broadcast, or view your friends' game-related stats.

Friends window when your status is set to offline

Going invisible is an alternative to setting your condition to offline. Setting your status to invisible will make y'all appear offline to all of your friends, merely you'll still be able to transport and receive messages, and use all of the other social functions Steam has to offering.

Note: Setting your status to offline or invisible is different from setting Steam to offline manner. You can nonetheless play online multiplayer games with your status set to offline; you cannot when Steam is ready to offline way.

How to Go Offline on Steam

In that location are 2 places on Steam where you tin can change your status.

The beginning is the "Friends" menu, found in the superlative left. Click "Friends" and then click "Invisible" or "Offline," depending on your preference.

The other option is found in the "Friends & Chat" popup. Click on "Friends & Conversation" in the bottom correct-hand corner of Steam.

Click the small chevron (it looks like an arrow without the tail) to expand a driblet-down menu, and click either "Invisible" or "Offline."

Just recall to gear up your status back to online — or at least invisible — when you're trying to apply Steam's multiplayer's functionalities.

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