How to hide online status on WhatsApp for Android

With time, WhatsApp keeps rolling out new features that enhance the overall experience of using the product. Recently, Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp has added some useful new features, one being the ability to use WhatsApp on multiple devices, and the other is the ability to hide online status on WhatsApp. 

I will talk about how to hide online status on WhatsApp, today on InkedFreedom. Users already know how to hide the time of last seen on WhatsApp, which is a privacy feature most people tweak. Perhaps, Meta realized, the ability to hide the online status on WhatsApp can be equally useful for users, and thankfully that is here now.

So, without any further delay, let’s get started with how to hide online status on WhatsApp for Android.

How to hide online status on WhatsApp?

To get started with how to hide online status on WhatsApp, open WhatsApp on your Android, tap on the triple-dot icon on the top-right corner of the UI, and then tap on ‘Settings’.

In the ‘Settings’ area, tap on ‘Privacy’ to configure the privacy settings of WhatsApp.

In the Privacy settings area, tap on the first option that says ‘Last seen and online’.

Here you can configure who can see the time you last opened WhatsApp, or the last seen time, and who can see the online status.

Coming to who can see the online status, you can either set it to ‘Everyone’, which is the default setting. But, you are here to know how to hide online status on WhatsApp. Simply tap on and select ‘Same as last seen’.

The next step is to set the last seen option to ‘Nobody’.

As you have chosen the ‘Same as last seen’, for who can see the online status, the privacy setting for last seen will automatically apply to who can see your online status. So, the option is pretty self-explanatory here.

But one thing to note here is that, just like hiding the last seen, if others can’t see you online, you can’t see the online status of others too. 

All the popular chat apps that we all used to use in the last decade have the option to show offline, even when the user is actually online. Even today, several apps come with the option to show a user offline, however, this neat feature to have granular control over privacy wasn’t available on WhatsApp before now.

On the other hand, if you want to know how to hide online status on WhatsApp from certain users, you can do that, as well. You just need to hide the last seen from your preferred set of users. This will automatically apply to, who can see you online, as well, just like I discussed above.

So, that’s how to hide online status on WhatsApp on Android? Do you have any questions? Feel free to comment on the same below.