How to Turn Off Active Status on Facebook and Messenger

When we’re active on Facebook or Messenger, these apps show our online status to our friends by a green dot. Sometimes we just want to browse Facebook or log into our Messenger account just to check messages. People usually tend to send you messages when they see you active and we might not feel like talking to them at times. Just because we’re online, we must not be obliged to respond to a Facebook post or a Messenger message. To save ourselves from such situations and maintain privacy, we can hide or turn off the Active Status on Facebook and Messenger apps for Android and iOS.

Out of 7.8 billion people in the world, 3.8 billion people use smartphones. Facebook is used by 2.4 billion people and that number shows how popular this social media platform is. We may befriend hundreds of people on Facebook who can also send us messages on Messenger but it’s not possible to react to everybody’s posts and messages. In my personal experience, when people see me online and don’t notice any reaction or comment to their FB posts, they later complain about that.

Similarly, our Facebook friends and sometimes unknown people send us messages on Messenger. They expect a prompt response especially when they see that green dot showing us active. Well, being active or online does not necessarily mean that we are willing to talk to people as well. In such cases, the best option is to disable or turn off the active status on Facebook and Messenger apps, and below, we’ll see how to do that. Similarly, you can also disable the video autoplay feature in the Facebook app.

Tip: Please note that once you have disabled active status, you won’t be able to see whether your Facebook friends and contacts are active or not just as they won’t be able to know when you are active.

Before you proceed, however, you should also check out our tutorial on how you can unlike multiple Facebook pages easily.

Turn off Active Status on Facebook

In order to disable the active status on the Facebook app for Android and iOS, follow the steps given below.

1. Open the Facebook app on your phone.
2. Tap the hamburger icon at the top-right corner of the screen to open the Facebook app menu.
3. Now tap on Settings and privacy > Settings.
4. On the next screen, tap on Profile settings.
5. Then tap on the Active status option in the Privacy menu
6. Doing so will take you to a page with a single option, saying Show when you are active. You just need to tap the toggle in front of this option.
7. You’ll see a pop-up asking if you want to Turn off Active Status. Just tap the Turn Off option.

That’s it! You have successfully turned off Active Status on the Facebook app. Let’s see how we can disable the same for the Messenger app. In case you want to use bold, italic, underlined, or cursive text on Facebook or Messenger, don’t miss our guide.

Disable Active Status on Messenger

Steps for the Messenger app for Android

To turn off your active status on the Messenger app from Facebook, the steps are even simpler.

1. Open Messenger and tap your profile picture icon.
2. You’ll be taken to Messenger’s Settings page.
3. Look for Active Status in the profile settings as shown below and tap it.
4. On the next screen, you see an option called Show when you’re active with a toggle button.
5. Just tap the toggle and you’ll be greeted with a pop-up asking if you really want to turn off the active status on Messenger.
6. Tap the Turn Off option and you are all done.

Read Also: How to Manage Facebook Media and Contacts Settings

Steps for the Messenger Web

In case you want to turn off the active status in the Messenger Web, follow the instructions given below.

1. Visit Messenger Web using any web browser on your computer. Sign in to your Facebook account if you need to.
2. Click the cogwheel icon to open the Messenger app menu and click on Settings.
3. Just like in the mobile app, you’ll see Show when you’re active option under Active Status.
4. Click on the toggle button and it will turn from green to gray.

If you use Messenger on your PC and aren’t happy with its UI and features, you should try these Messenger clients for Windows 10.

Things to Keep in Mind

We just saw how we can turn off Active Status on Facebook and Messenger apps as well as on the web version of FB Messenger. Your friends and contacts on Facebook should not see your online status.  If you still notice that disabling the Facebook active status feature is not working or Facebook’s active status keeps turning on, here’s the fix.

Actually, I had this issue myself. I turned off the active status from Facebook settings on my Samsung Galaxy Note 10+. However, when I checked my Facebook online status using a friend’s phone, I could see myself active. After some digging, I realized that I had Facebook installed on my OnePlus 7T as well and I didn’t disable the feature on that phone. The point is if you want the active status feature to work properly, you must turn off the Active Status setting across all devices on which you use Facebook or Messenger apps.

Read Next: How to Remove 3rd-Party Apps from Facebook