Hiding your online status
Turn off the green dot for everyone with one switch — or, with GS Pro, schedule invisible hours, hide your presence from specific people, and decide whether DMs still reach you while you’re hidden.
Reviewed regularly to match the current app.
Overview
Your online status is the small green dot and the “last seen” caption that tell other readers whether you’re around. Hiding it doesn’t change anything else about your account — you can still publish poems, comment, follow people, and send messages exactly as before. The only thing that changes is whether anyone can tell you’re here.
Every account gets the same one-switch master toggle for free. GS Pro adds a second layer of granular controls underneath: a schedule, a per-person hide list, and a switch that decides whether DMs reach you while you’re hidden.
The master toggle (free for every account)
The simplest version of this feature is a single switch that turns your presence off for everyone at once. Use this when you want a clean, no-friction way to disappear from the site without thinking about who can see what.
- Go to Settings → Privacy.
- Scroll down to More Privacy Controls.
- Flip the switch next to Hide Online Status.
That’s the whole feature for free accounts. The green dot disappears from your profile and from anywhere your name surfaces; the “last seen” caption stops updating. Your changes save automatically — you’ll see a small Saved pill appear in the top-right corner of the page to confirm.
Hiding your online status is not the same as blocking someone. Hiding only affects what other readers see about your presence — they can still visit your profile, follow you, comment on your poems, and send you messages (subject to your other settings). If you want to fully cut someone off, use Block instead. See Block, mute, or report a user for the difference.
Advanced hiding options (GS Pro)
The three controls in this section are GS Pro perks. Free accounts keep the master toggle — the binary, hide-from-everyone switch above — and see an Upgrade Now card instead of the controls below. Nothing about the free toggle changes when you upgrade; the Pro options are an additional layer on top of it.
Once GS Pro is active on your account, an Advanced hiding options pill appears underneath the Hide Online Status row. Click/tap it to open three nested controls.
Hide me during set hours
Schedule your invisibility instead of toggling it by hand. Useful for protecting evenings, weekends, or any block of time you don’t want strangers tracking.
- In the Advanced hiding options panel, find the row with the clock icon (Hide me during set hours).
- Flip the switch on the right to turn the schedule on.
- Use the From and Until time pickers to set the window. Times are in your local timezone — the timezone is shown in the helper text so there’s no ambiguity.
- If your Until time is earlier than your From time, the schedule simply wraps past midnight. For example, 9:00 PM → 7:00 AM means “hide me overnight.” You’ll see a small Wraps past midnight note next to the pickers when this happens.
Your status hides automatically during the window and comes back outside of it. No further input needed.
Hide my status from specific people
Sometimes you want most of your community to see you’re around — just not this one person. This is the control for that. Add up to 200 viewers to your hide list and your presence stays invisible to them specifically.
- In the same panel, find the row with the person-slash icon (Hide my status from specific people).
- Type a username into the search box. You can type it in any case —
UserB,userb,USERB— the search is case-insensitive. - Click/tap Add. The person appears as a chip below the input, showing their display name and avatar.
- To remove someone, click/tap the small × on their chip. The change saves immediately.
Adding someone to your hide list only suppresses your green dot and last-seen caption for that person. It doesn’t block them, mute their comments, or hide your profile or poems from them. They can still:
- visit your profile and read your poems,
- comment, like, and rate your work,
- send you DMs (subject to your messaging settings),
- follow you, and
- see anything they could see before.
You also keep full ability to interact with them — comment on their poems, DM them, follow them, all of it. If you need a harder boundary, use Block.
Allow new messages while I’m hidden
The third row controls whether anyone can DM you while your status is hidden — whether by the master toggle, the schedule, or the per-person hide list.
- On (default): people who can normally message you can still reach you while you’re hidden. They just can’t see whether you’re actively online when they hit send.
- Off: new DM attempts are bounced with an automatic “they’re unavailable right now” reply while you’re hidden. Existing conversations stay open — the bounce only applies to new threads someone tries to open.
Flip the switch on the right side of the row to change it. Like everything else on this page, it saves automatically.
What happens when the master toggle is on
If you turn on the master Hide Online Status toggle at the top of the section, you’re hidden from everyone 24/7. That’s a stronger setting than the schedule or the per-person hide list, so those two controls become inactive while master is on — there’s nothing for them to do.
You’ll see a yellow banner at the top of the Advanced hiding options panel explaining this when it happens. Your schedule times and hide-list entries are saved, not deleted; they just don’t apply while master is on. The moment you turn master off, they kick back in exactly as you left them.
The Allow new messages while I’m hidden switch is the one exception — it stays active even when master is on, because the question “while I’m hidden, should DMs still reach me?” still applies.
If something goes wrong
- “The Advanced hiding options pill isn’t showing.” Confirm GS Pro is active under Settings → Membership. Free accounts see an Upgrade Now card in place of the pill — that’s expected.
- “I can’t find the user I’m trying to hide from.” The search uses the person’s username (their
@handle), not their display name. If you only know their display name, open their profile from the search bar at the top of the site — their username appears in the URL. - “Why doesn’t my schedule kick in right now?” If the master toggle is on, the schedule is inactive by design (see the section above). Turn master off and the schedule will resume the next time the current time crosses your From threshold.
- “Someone on my hide list told me they can still see when I’m online.” They may be looking at a cached page. Ask them to refresh, or wait a minute or two and check again. If it persists, contact support.
- “My GS Pro subscription lapsed. What happens to my schedule and hide list?” Your saved settings stay on file. While GS Pro is inactive, only the free master toggle applies; the schedule and hide list don’t take effect. The moment you resubscribe, they pick up exactly where they left off.
Where to go next
If you want a harder boundary than hiding your presence, see Block, mute, or report a user. For more on what your overall profile shows to readers, see Understanding poem visibility. For the full picture of what comes with GS Pro, head to GS Pro pricing.