LinkedIn is a popular professional networking platform used by millions of people around the world. While LinkedIn provides great opportunities to connect with other professionals, build your network, and further your career, at times you may wish to use LinkedIn without advertising your online presence to your connections.
The good news is that LinkedIn provides options to control your visibility settings and hide your online status if you wish. In this article, we’ll go over the steps to hide your online status on both desktop and mobile versions of LinkedIn.
Why You Might Want to Hide Your Online Status
Here are some common reasons why you may want to hide your online status on LinkedIn:
- Avoid distractions – Hiding your online status allows you to use LinkedIn without constant notifications and messages coming in.
- Maintain privacy – You may not always want connections knowing when you’re online.
- Appear offline while working – If you need to focus without interruptions, appearing offline can help.
- Control how you interact – You can check profiles and content without notifying connections.
The ability to go incognito on LinkedIn gives you greater control over your experience. Next, we’ll go over how to change your settings.
How to Hide Your Online Status on LinkedIn Desktop
Here are the steps to hide your online status on the LinkedIn desktop site:
- Click on your profile image in the top right corner of your LinkedIn homepage.
- In the dropdown menu, click Settings & Privacy.
- On the left sidebar menu, click Visibility.
- Under the Your public profile & activity section, toggle the slider for Show when you’re active or online to the off position.
Once you toggle this setting off, your online status will no longer be visible to your connections on LinkedIn desktop.
Other Desktop Settings to Adjust Visibility
While you’re in the Visibility settings, there are a few other options you can adjust to further control your public profile:
- Your profile photo – Choose who can see your profile photo.
- Interests and expertise – Select whether your interests and expertise are public.
- Articles and content – Manage visibility of articles, posts, and media.
Take some time to review each section and modify based on your preferences.
Hiding Your Status on LinkedIn Mobile
You can also hide your online status on the LinkedIn app. Here’s how:
- Open the LinkedIn app and tap your profile picture.
- Tap Settings & Privacy.
- Tap Visibility.
- Toggle off Let others know when you’re online or active.
This will prevent your status from displaying on mobile. The mobile settings also allow you to control the visibility of your profile photo, interests, articles, and more.
Who Can Still See Your Online Status?
When you hide your online status on LinkedIn, it prevents your 1st-degree connections from seeing when you’re active. However, it’s important to note that hiding your status does not make you completely invisible.
Here are some cases where your online status may still be visible even after adjusting your settings:
- LinkedIn employees can see status for internal monitoring.
- Paid account holders using Sales Navigator may see last active timestamps.
- Some third-party apps may show status based on permissions.
- Users who already had your profile open may see status changes.
So while toggling your online visibility provides more privacy, it does not make you completely offline or anonymous to all LinkedIn users. However, it does successfully prevent your first-degree network from seeing when you’re on LinkedIn.
Pro Tips for Going Incognito
In addition to adjusting your visibility settings, here are some extra tips for flying under the radar on LinkedIn:
- Use private browsing mode on your web browser when logging into LinkedIn.
- Frequently clear your LinkedIn browsing history and cookies.
- Block specific connections whose activity you want to hide from.
- Turn off LinkedIn notifications so they don’t reveal when you’re online.
- Use an alternative or secondary account for added privacy.
Combining these tips with your visibility settings can help you successfully use LinkedIn in invisible mode.
The Takeaway on Hiding Your LinkedIn Status
Having the ability to hide your online status gives you more control over your LinkedIn activity and presence. To recap the key points:
- You can hide your active/online status through desktop and mobile settings.
- Adjusting visibility prevents first-degree connections from seeing when you’re online.
- You are not fully invisible as some users may still see last active timestamps.
- Use private browsing and block connections for added anonymity.
While not completely hidden, adjusting these settings provides greater privacy. Now you can navigate LinkedIn while avoiding distractions, maintaining boundaries, and surfing profiles without notifying your network when you’re online.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does turning off my online visibility remove me from the “People Also Viewed” section?
No, disabling your online status does not remove you from the “People Also Viewed” module. This section is based on profile views and algorithmic matching rather than active status. To be removed, you would need to adjust your general visibility settings.
Can I selectively hide my status from some connections but not others?
LinkedIn’s current settings do not allow toggling visibility by individual connections. It is an all-or-nothing setting that either shows your active status globally or hides it from your full first-degree network.
Does Premium allow for more customizable online visibility settings?
Unfortunately no, LinkedIn’s Premium subscriptions do not offer more granular control over active status visibility compared to free accounts. The settings are the same across all account types.
Can my status displays be personalized or say things other than “Active” or “Online”?
At this time, LinkedIn does not allow customizing or changing what displays for your active/online status. The predefined “Active” and “Online” labels are the only options that will be shown publicly.
Will hiding my status also remove me from search results?
No, hiding your active/online status has no effect on LinkedIn search. Your profile will still appear in searches done by name, company, school, etc. To be unsearchable, you would need to change your general profile visibility settings.
Conclusion
Controlling your online visibility is an important way to manage boundaries and interactions on LinkedIn. While not completely hidden, the platform does provide settings to prevent your first-degree connections from seeing your active and online status. Adjust these settings and combine them with privacy tips to gain more control over when and how you want to engage with your network.