How to Appear Offline on Slack, and What Still Gives You Away

To appear offline on Slack, click your profile photo and choose Set yourself as away. Your green dot turns into a hollow grey dot. That is the same dot people see when you are signed out, so nobody can tell the two apart. Slack has no "last seen" time and no label that says you chose Away.

Slack has no setting called invisible mode, so many people think you cannot hide. The Away toggle does the same job. You look offline, and your messages and notifications keep arriving. We tested the Away toggle in the Slack web app on 30 September 2026, including what happens when you post and when you reopen Slack. The screenshots below are from that test.

How to appear offline on Slack

On desktop or in the browser:

• Click your profile photo at the bottom of the sidebar.
• Click Set yourself as away.
• Your dot changes from filled green to hollow grey at once, in every channel and DM.


You can also type /away in any message box. In our test it set us away, and typing /away again set us back to active.

On the iPhone or Android app:

• Tap You in the bottom tab bar, or your profile photo.
• Tap Set yourself as away.

To come back, open the same menu and click Set yourself as active.

Manual Away sticks. Slack's developer documentation says a manual away status "will persist between connections", and our test matched it:

• • Posting did not bring us back. We set ourselves away, then typed and sent a message. Four seconds later Slack's API still returned presence: away with manual_away: true, and the profile still said Away.
• • Reloading Slack kept us away, but Slack asked. After a reload, Slack showed a box titled "Set yourself to active?" with No Thanks and Set to Active. We clicked No Thanks and stayed away. One click on Set to Active ends your cover, so read the box before you click.


The box has a Don't ask again checkbox. Only Set yourself as active, Set to Active in that box, /away typed again, or an app you gave access to your account turns you green again.

Away applies to the workspace you set it in. If you are signed in to two workspaces, set Away in each one.

What your team sees: Away vs offline

Slack shows the same grey dot for every state that is not active:

Your real state	Dot teammates see	Can they tell which one it is?
Using Slack now	Filled green dot	Not needed
In Slack, set yourself as away	Hollow grey dot	No
No input in Slack for 10 minutes	Hollow grey dot	No
Slack closed or signed out	Hollow grey dot	No

There is no "away since 2:14 PM" and no icon for "chose to look offline". For the full list of dots and symbols, see how Slack active status works. For the timer that makes you grey without asking, see how Slack decides when you're away.

Away, pause notifications, or quit: which one to use

People mix up three tools. Only one of them looks offline and keeps you reachable.

• • Set yourself as away. The dot goes grey. Notifications, DMs, and mentions still reach you.
• • Pause notifications. The dot does not change. Slack adds a snooze Z to it, which everyone can see. Details are in what the Z on a Slack dot means.
• • Quit Slack on every device. You are really offline, and nothing reaches you until you open Slack again.

A common case from r/Slack: someone on call wants to look offline to the sales team and to customers in shared channels, but still wants a sound when their own team @mentions them. Away does that. Leave notifications on, and check that your notification schedule does not pause them after hours (Preferences, then Availability, under Allow notifications). If you do pause notifications, add your team to your VIP list so their messages still come through.

What still gives you away

Away hides your dot. It does not hide what you do in Slack.

• The typing line. When you type in a DM or channel, the other person sees "is typing" under the message box.
• Posts and reactions. Every message and emoji reaction you add has a time on it.
• Huddles. If you join a huddle, you appear in its member list.
• The snooze Z. Pausing notifications puts a Z on your dot. If you want to look offline, leave notifications alone.
• Other workspaces. A second workspace still shows you green until you set Away there too.

To send a message without breaking your cover, schedule it. Our guide to scheduling Slack messages has the steps.

Can you appear offline to one person?

No. Slack's developer documentation describes presence as one value per member: "A user can have one of two possible presence values, active or away." Your custom status is one field on your profile. Neither has a list of who may see it, so there is nothing to set per person, for you or for an admin. Set yourself as away, and that one person sees the grey dot, and so does everyone else.

Slack's Hide a person feature works the other way round. Open the person's profile, click the three dots, choose Hide [name], then Hide This Person. Slack's help center says their name, photo and messages are then hidden from you behind a warning you can click through, and you get no banner notifications when they DM or mention you, though the unread badge stays. They are not told, and Slack's announcement says admins cannot see whom you hid. Slack calls it "one way, meaning the hidden person will continue to see all messages as normal", and that includes your dot and your custom status.

If one person is the problem, pick the tool for what they do. Hide them or mute the DM if you want fewer messages from them. Set a notification schedule, covered in Slack Do Not Disturb, if they ping you after hours; it shows a z to everyone during those hours. If they watch your dot, Slack has no per-person fix: put your working hours in your custom status or talk to your manager. Harassment goes to your workspace admin or HR, because Hide a person is not a block. Webex is the exception among work chat apps: it can hide your status from people you choose, see how to hide your online status on Webex.

Can your boss tell you are online?

Not in real time.

• Admins see the same dot as everyone else. No admin screen shows your "real" presence behind a manual Away.

• Analytics count days, not minutes. On paid plans, admins see a member's last active date and message counts. That finds unused accounts. It does not show whether you are online now.

• The API returns what the dot shows. A bot that reads your presence gets away as soon as you set Away.

• Access logs record sign-ins. Owners and admins can see when and from which device someone signed in. They do not show minute-by-minute activity.

Your employer can still read exported messages and channel history, and any monitoring software on a company laptop works outside Slack. Away hides your dot and nothing else. For what Slack itself records, see does Slack track mouse movement. If you mean Slack with no internet connection, see Slack offline mode.

The opposite problem: staying green while you work

Most people want to look offline now and then. The daily problem is the reverse: Slack marks you away while you are working. Slack turns you grey after 10 minutes with no input in the Slack window, so reading a document or coding in another app makes you look gone.

Slack has no setting for this side. Set yourself as active only clears a manual Away; after that the idle timer applies again. Mouse jigglers move a pointer that Slack does not watch. How to keep Slack active compares the methods that work. Slack Green keeps your dot green on a schedule you pick, such as your working hours, with nothing installed and the laptop shut. When the schedule ends you go away as usual, so you still choose when you look offline.

FAQ

Does Slack have an invisible mode?

Not by that name. Set yourself as away does the same thing. You look like an offline user and still receive everything. You have to turn it on and off yourself. Discord does have an Invisible status; see Slack vs Discord, and for why it cannot hide you from one person only, how to appear offline to one person on Discord.

Does Slack show when you were last online?

No. Slack has no last-seen time in profiles or DMs. Admin analytics show the last active date on paid plans, never a time. The details are in does Slack show last seen.