How To Appear Offline On The PS5 – Updated February, 2022

It’s easier than you may think to appear offline on the PS5. Why would you want to? Well that depends. Do you ever just want to sit down and play games without interacting with people on your friends list? Sure you do. Who doesn’t? In fact, most people probably feel this way at least sometimes. Even if it’s not often.

The fact of the matter is people will have different reasons for utilizing this feature. Maybe your friends want you to squad up in the latest shooter. But you’d rather play a solo title you’ve been neck deep in for the past few days. And appearing offline is easier than having to decline.

Whatever the reason, this is a short guide on how to appear offline on PS5 in the even you ever want to do this yourself.

How to appear offline on PS5 via the homescreen

For starters, get a PS5. Kidding, kidding… kind of. But that’s obvious right? So let’s move on. The first thing you need to do is make sure you’re on the homescreen.

Click the avatar from either location

Click on your avatar to bring up the list of actions you can take regarding your profile. And before we get too far, note that if you have a little green dot next to your avatar, that means you’re online. So now you know what to keep an eye out for if you’re ever not sure.

Highlight online status (the top option)

Next you should see online status as the top option in the menu that pops up after clicking on your avatar. Highlight that and click it.

Select “appear offline”

Simply select the appear offline option under online and busy, and you’ll switch to appearing offline. This will make it so no one on your friends list can actually see you’re online. Which is probably what you want if you’re reading this guide.

But there’s another way to adjust your online status.

How to appear offline on PS5 via the control center

If you hit the PlayStation button to bring up the control center, your profile avatar is usually towards the end. That is unless you’ve shuffled things up after Sony’s big software update in September, which allowed you to reorganize everything in the control center. Wherever your profile avatar sits, find and highlight it, then click on it.

Click online status and select appear offline

From here the process is exactly the same as above. Just hit the online status option to bring up the three different options you have for setting your online status. Which again are online, busy, and appear offline. Select appear offline and you’re good to go.

You will now appear as if you’re offline to anyone in your friends list. You will however still see them online and can still receive notifications when anyone signs on (unless they’ve also set their status to appear offline). As well as for anything else.

And that’s it. Now you can play games to your heart’s content while appearing offline. Simple, right?