Most social media networks and chat platforms these days include a feature that shows when a user was last online or last active on the service, which can be either helpful or a hindrance, depending on your personal or business situation.
WhatsApp includes an optional "Last Seen" status for the person you're chatting with in a conversation thread, while Instagram tells you how long it was since a user was active when you're viewing messages from them in your Direct inbox. Instagram also shows a green dot next to their profile picture and name if the person is currently interacting with the app.
Sometimes though, for whatever reason, you might not want someone – or indeed anyone – to know when you were last active on social media. Fortunately, WhatsApp and Instagram both allow you to hide your activity status in the app. Here our focus is on how to hide your Instagram status, but you can find how to do the same thing in WhatsApp in our dedicated how-to article.
Hiding Your Instagram Online Status
- Open the Instagram app and tap the Profile icon in the bottom-right corner.
- Tap the More (three lines) icon in the top-right corner.
- Under "How others can interact with you," tap Messages and story replies.
- Tap Show activity status.
- Tap the switch next to Show activity status to toggle it on or off.
Did you know you can also hide Like and View counts on Instagram posts, too? Check out our dedicated tutorial to learn how.
