How to Hide Your Activity Status on Instagram?
In the past couple of years, Instagram has launched a number of new features to make itself more secure and offer enhanced convenience to the users.
From changes to the API, official death of Instagram bots, automatic scheduling of posts, muting feature, to changes in the algorithm, it had been a busy couple of years for Instagram and its users.
But while there are mixed reactions on all the different features, the majority of them surely like the Activity Status. Instagram released this feature in July this year and it allows you to see when your friends are online.
This Activity Status is available in the form a green dot located next to the Instagram handle to let others know that you are currently active on the app.
If you are not online, people would get to see how long ago you were online on the app.
This feature is available when you are looking at your Direct inbox as well as next to the name of your friends who appear in the list when you want to send an Instagram post from your feed.
Only people who’ve followed you back or ones with whom you had a Direct conversation can see your Activity Status.
But while it is a great feature to know when your friend or follower is online in order to quickly start a conversation, there are times when you’d like to turn this feature off for more privacy.
Especially, if you have a business page with a lot of followers, you might not really want all your followers to know that you are online every single time.
So, can this Activity Status be turned off? Yes, this is very much possible. As a matter of fact, hiding your Activity Status is super simple. Let us have a look how it is done-
Hiding Your Activity Status on Instagram
While it is great that you can now ensure that your friends see your DMs instantly, there are a lot of times when you just want to scroll your feed in peace without letting all of them know that you are online.
To turn your Activity Status off, tap on the gear icon or three dots at the top of your profile to access Instagram settings.
Scroll down and select “Privacy and Security” option. Here, look for “Activity Status” and toggle the button which says “Show Activity Status”.
That is it, the Activity Status would be turned off and your Instagram activity will no longer be available to others.
If you do not like the feature at all, you can keep it off permanently. However, if you’d like to keep it off only for some time, you can turn it on again by following the same steps.
However, know that once you turn this off, you too would not be able to see the activity of others.
How to See Activity Status of Others?
If you kept the Activity Status on, not only others get to see when you are/were online, but you too can check the same for others. There are a few ways in which this can be done.
● The most common way to do this is to look for a green dot next to their photo and username in the Direct inbox
● Even elsewhere on the platform, you can look for a green dot next to their photo and username
● In the Direct inbox, you can also look for the recent activity which will be shown as Active yesterday, Active 30 mins ago, Typing, Seen, etc.
But what if you don’t want your friends or Instagram followers to know that you are online but also want to make sure that you receive all their DMs instantly? Well, there is a way around that as well.
Instagram Direct Notifications
- If you’ve turned off your Activity Status, you’d not be able to see the online status of your friends and followers too. However, you can ensure that you are able to instantly receive all their DMs.
This is very important for businesses looking to improve their reputation through Instagram and don’t want to miss messages from their followers.
For this, you can go to “Settings” in your Instagram app and look for “Notifications”.
Then tap “Push Notifications” where you’ll get a list of all the apps and services for which you’d like to receive notifications.
Look for “Instagram Direct”, tap it and select “From Everyone”. After doing this, you’ll see a blue checkmark on the option.
Once done, you’ll start receiving notifications on your mobile phone when anyone sends you a DM.
When you receive the notifications, you can either check the DM instantly or later.
Conclusion
The activity status is an excellent way for business profiles on Instagram to help present themselves as available, accessible and responsive.
This is a small but very effective way to further improve your reputation on Instagram and attract more followers.
But for times when you don't want your followers to know that you are online and start bombarding you with DMs, you can easily turn the Activity Status off as now you know how to do it.
As a business trying to improve your social credibility, prefer maintaining a good balance between turning the Activity Status on/off.
This would help you ensure that you are available for your followers and also get adequate time to peacefully browse through your feed, collect important data, and use it for improving your marketing strategy.
