There are times when we don’t feel like talking to someone online, yet we don’t want to remove that person from our friends.
If you would like to hide your Messenger activity for a selected person but remain visible to the rest of your Facebook friends, read my guide today.
Online status on Messenger – when do we see the green dot?
Active status is a feature that tells our friends and contacts on Facebook and Messenger when we are or have been online. Friends and contacts (i.e. people outside of friends but with whom we have spoken) see a green dot next to our profile when we are online or the time of our last activity when we are offline.
It is worth clarifying that the green dot displayed next to people’s profiles is not the same as the green dot that appears on Facebook pages. Facebook pages receive a green dot if they have been recently active or if they respond quickly to messages.
Active status can be turned off for everyone or just selected people. When we turn off active status, our friends and contacts will stop seeing information about our current or recently completed activity. By the same token, we will no longer be able to see their active status, even if it is enabled for them. So justice is done.
Important: if you want complete anonymity and do not want your active status to be displayed to your friends, you need to disable this feature wherever you use Messenger or Facebook – both on your computer and on your phone. If you only do this on one device, your activity will still be visible on the other.
How do I hide online status on Messenger for one person on a computer?
Facebook Active status for one person can be quickly hidden using a computer. To do this, follow the steps below:
- log in to Facebook from your browser,
- click the Messenger icon in the top right corner of the screen,
- click the three horizontal dots (options) icon,
- select the item: active status,
- enable Active Status if it has been disabled so far,
- click the “Edit” button next to the item: Active Status: OFF for some,
- find from the list or enter manually the name of the user from whom you wish to hide your activity,
- click on the square next to the user name,
- click the blue “Save” button.
After completing the mentioned steps, the person we have selected will not see our active status. Also, we will not see when she/he is or was available.
How do I hide online status on Messenger for one person on my phone?
When we want to hide activity on Messenger for one person using the phone, the situation gets a bit more complicated. In the Messenger app options, we only have the option to completely disable active status for everyone. So how do we handle this obstacle?
While searching for the information I needed to write this article, I came across an instruction on one site telling me to open Facebook on my phone from the browser. It then advised to enable the PC version in the browser settings. There, there was supposedly an option to enable Messenger without transferring to the app. I checked this and unfortunately this option does not currently exist.
However, I did try logging into Messenger from the browser on my phone, via messenger.com. I had previously turned on the computer view in the browser settings. Although I was able to hide activity for one particular person on the website, in the Messenger app on the phone this setting still didn’t work. In the app, I could still see the active status of the person I had blocked through the site.
So the Messenger app and messenger.com are not correlated but treated as two separate devices.
So it turns out that the only way to hide Messenger activity for one person on the phone is to block her in the app. Only then will she not be shown information about our availability.
Unfortunately, this comes with a downside – if the blocked person texts us, they will receive a feedback message that reads: “You cannot reply to this conversation”. Although Messenger does not explicitly inform the user that they have been blocked, they can easily find out by checking the message on Google.
If you still want to use this option, see the following instructions on how to block a user in Messenger. The first instruction is for regular Messenger, and the second is for Messenger Lite*.
Regular Messenger
- Open the Messenger app on your phone,
- on the Chats screen, type the name of the user you want to block into the search box,
- you can also search for the contact in conversations,
- select the contact in question, then click the “i” icon in the top right corner,
- select the Block option at the bottom of the list.
Messenger Lite
Open the Messenger Lite application on your phone,click the icon representing two people at the top. A list of your friends and contacts will appear,select the contact you want to block, then click the ‘i’ icon in the top right corner,select the Block options.
Below I’ve also included instructions on how to disable Active status for all contacts from your phone – in regular Messenger and Messenger Lite.
Regular Messenger
- Open the Messenger app on your phone,
- select your profile icon in the top left corner,
- click on Active Status,
- move the slider to the left and click “Disable”.
Messenger Lite
Open the Messenger Lite application on your phone,click on the Settings icon (cogwheel),select Active Status,move the slider to the left and click “Disable”.
*Update:
The Messenger Lite app is currently no longer available. You will not be able to download it either on your iPhone or Android phone. Only the Facebook lite app is still available in the Play Store.
I hope you found the above information at least a little useful and that you were able to hide activity on Messenger for selected people. I encourage you to read the rest of my posts. 🙂