How to hide Steam activity

 Luckily, Steam offers a number of options for hiding activity on the platform. Let's find out details through the following article!

1. Hide game details

When someone visits your profile, they can see which games you've played and for how many hours. However, if you don't want your gamer friends to be curious about your habits, you can hide the games you're playing, the games you own in your library, and even your wishlist.

Here's how to make your game details private on Steam:

1. Launch Steam on PC.
2. Hover the cursor over your username in the top right corner and select View my profile .
3. Click the Edit Profile button .
4. Select Privacy settings .
5. Next to Game details , click Public and set it to Friends Only or Private if you don't want anyone to see your list of played games. Steam will automatically save your new profile settings.

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Use Friends Only if you agree to let your Steam friends see your gaming activity. But choose Private if you don't want anyone to see it.

2. Hide specific Steam games from friends

On Steam, you can mark certain games as private, which makes them invisible to others on your profile. This is different from just hiding a game in the library.

Marking a game as private will completely prevent your friends from seeing that game on your profile. In contrast, hiding a game from your library only affects your own library view - others can still see the game on your profile.

To mark a game as private and hide it from your Steam friends, find the game in your library and right-click on it. Then, select Manage > Mark as Private .

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To view games set to private on Steam, you will need to visit your Steam profile. To do that, click on the username in the top right corner and go to View my profile > Games . Games marked as private will have a crossed-out eye icon on the right side. You can click this icon to display the game on your profile.

But if you don't plan to play this game anymore, you can completely delete the game from your Steam account.

3. Set Steam status to offline or hidden

Hiding all game details from your Steam profile just to hide the game you're playing might be a bit excessive. If you just want to hide the fact that you're online and playing games, a better option is to set your online status to hidden. This way, the game will still show up on your profile page, but your friends won't get notified when you start playing or see the "In-Game" status on their friends list.

After launching the Steam client, open the Friends menu and select Offline or Invisible .

After choosing one of the options, you can play any game in your library without your friends knowing. However, they will be able to see any achievements or game activity if they visit your profile.

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Note that setting your status to Offline will log you out of Steam chat, so you won't receive messages from your friends. If you still want communication then choose Invisible instead. Another thing to note is that you will not receive any Steam invites when the status is set to Offline or Invisible.

Besides hiding your Steam gaming activity, you can also customize your Steam game activity status.

4. Replace recent activity

If you didn't remember to set your status to Offline or Invisible before joining the game and don't want your friends to see your recent activity, you can try a quick solution.

Launch any game from your Steam library and close it after a few minutes. Then do the same thing with two or three other games. These short sessions will replace the latest activity on your Steam profile.

Additionally, you can use Steam's free watchable episodes to replace your recent activity. Here's how to do it:

1. Go to Steam's website.
2. Look for one of the games available for free on Steam, such as The Making of Horizon Zero Dawn.
3. Play one of the episodes.
4. When Steam opens a new window, close it as quickly as possible. This way, Steam doesn't have a chance to load content.

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Repeat the above steps two or three more times but play different episodes. Steam will try to replace the recent activity, but since it can't play the episodes properly, it will just delete the previous version of the recent activity.

5. Set Steam profile to private mode

If you don't want to manage multiple settings on your account, you can choose the core option and set your Steam profile to Private. This will affect multiple categories, such as Game details, Friends List and Inventory.

To set your profile to Private, follow these steps:

1. Hover over your username and select View my profile .
2. Click the Edit profile button .
3. From the left, open Privacy Settings .
4. Set My profile to Private .

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Sometimes the most fun comes from playing the game on your own terms, and having a little privacy can greatly enhance that experience. Applying the tips above will help you hide your Steam activity, from hiding your entire library to keeping specific games a secret.

Isabella Humphrey

Update 24 June 2024