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How to appear offline on Steam

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Gaming on PC at desk with RGB lighting.
Axville / Unsplash

No one can deny that Steam is the most fully-featured storefront for PC gaming. With regular Steam sales that discount the best PC games, every gamer has a Steam account. That likely means you have a full Friends list of people wanting to play or chat all the time. That's usually great, but sometimes you just want to settle in for some solo gaming without people sending messages or asking to play. An easy way to avoid that is to appear offline.

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Difficulty

Easy

Duration

5 minutes

What You Need

  • A Steam account

How to appear offline on Steam

If you want to go incognito and appear offline on Steam, all it takes is a few clicks from the home screen and you can play whatever you like without anyone knowing.

Step 1: Launch Steam.

Step 2: Click the Friends and Chat button in the bottom-right corner.

The steam home screen.
Valve
Related

Step 3: Click the dropdown arrow to the right of your username.

Step 4: Choose Offline to appear offline. You can also select Invisible if you want to be able to start conversations with specific people while appearing offline to everyone else.

A steam friends list menu.
Valve

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Jesse Lennox
Jesse Lennox
Jesse Lennox has been a writer at Digital Trends for over four years and has no plans of stopping. He covers all things…
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