How to Appear Offline on Steam in 4 Easy Steps

Steam has risen to untold heights of fame in the last few years by becoming the biggest video game distributor globally, released on Windows, Mac, and Android. Thousands of games are launched on Steam every year, with something to appeal to every budget and genre. It also serves as a social hub where you can add your friends to see what they’re playing and what they want to play. You can chat to them and join them in-game with ease, but sometimes you hit your social limit and want to game in peace, away from everyone else. 

How to Appear Offline on Steam

In this guide, we’ll show how to set yourself to Offline and tweak your settings to make sure that you always appear Offline when you log into Steam if your desire for privacy and solitude is more than a once-off thing.

Step 1: Open your Friends List

Open your Steam and select the Friends & Chat option in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. This will open up your Friends List.

Step 2: Select Offline

Select the arrow next to your profile name and click on the Offline option. This will immediately make you appear offline on Steam until you choose to change it back to Online or close Steam.

Step 3: Access Settings

This will reset the moment you restart Steam, and you’ll appear as Online again. If you want to reverse this and appear Offline as your default setting, then select the Gear icon next to your profile name in your Friends List.

Step 4: Toggle the default settings

In the Settings menu that pops up, select the Sign into friends when Steam client starts option so that the switch shows as Off. This ensures that you always show as Offline unless you manually go and change it.

Lurking in the Shadows

While gaming is often more fun with friends, sometimes you need a little bit of solitude to unwind and lose yourself in another world for a while. We all need a way to escape life now and then, and sometimes people get in the way of that. Luckily, Steam made sure to give us that escape and allow us to play games free from the need to socialize with others.