Can you appear offline on Epic Games?

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Over the last few years, Epic Games has built up a PC gaming platform that gives established giants like Steam a serious run for their money.

Riding the monumental success of its hit game, Fortnite, Epic created a game publishing platform that has attracted tons of developers and a massive user base, with nearly 900 million cross-platform accounts by the end of 2024.

For a while, though, the platform’s rapid growth meant it lagged on some quality-of-life features. Early criticisms often pointed to a clunky store and a game library that looked like a jumbled mess compared to the slick sorting on other platforms.

But Epic has been busy.

The launcher now has a much-improved library with list views and better sorting, a new download manager that gives you control over scheduling and queues, and a ton of new social features like cross-platform chat.

Still, what about appearing offline? While gaming on Steam or Battle.net, you can easily go invisible.

But what about Epic Games? Can you just hop into a game of Fortnite without everyone on your friends list seeing that you’re online?

So, can you appear offline on Epic Games?

Short Answer: Not really

Unfortunately, Epic Games still doesn’t have a dedicated option for users to appear offline while gaming, a feature that has been requested by the community for years.unrealengine.com

Without this feature, there’s no simple toggle to hop into an online game without your entire friend list seeing that you are online.

However, there are a couple of workarounds that will kind of get the trick done, though they all come with limitations.

Here’s how to manage your online status on Epic Games

While a true “invisible” mode is still missing in action, Epic gives you a couple of ways to manage your presence.

Set your status to “Away”

The simplest, though least effective, method is to just set your status to “Away.” This won’t hide you, but it might signal to your friends that you don’t want to be disturbed.

• In the Epic Games Launcher, click on your Avatar in the top right corner.
• Under your name, click on Online.
• Select Away from the dropdown menu.

Your friends will still see you’re online, but with an “Away” status. It’s better than nothing.

The “Actually Go Offline” workaround

If you’re serious about playing incognito, the only foolproof method is to actually disconnect your PC from the internet. This lets you play single-player games from your library without anyone knowing.

That said, the feature is somewhat complicated and pretty limiting. We’ll break it down below.

1. While logged into your Epic Games account, click your Avatar in the top right and select Settings.
2. Scroll down and make sure the Enable Offline Mode Browsing setting is checked.
3. Disconnect your PC from the internet (unplug the Ethernet cable or turn off Wi-Fi).
4. Shut down the Epic Games Launcher completely (make sure it’s not still running in your system tray).
5. Reload the Epic Games Launcher. It will prompt you to Sign In to Epic Games or Skip Sign-In. Choose to skip the sign-in to enter offline mode.
6. You’ll have access to your library and any games that can be played offline.

As you can see, the only way to appear offline on Epic Games is to actually go offline.

This isn’t super convenient if you’re looking to hop into an online experience without your friends knowing.

For games like Fortnite, you can also set your in-game party privacy to “Invite Only” to prevent people from jumping into your squad unannounced, but they’ll still see you’re online.gamesradar.com

For now, these workarounds will have to do. It’s a strange omission for a platform with 74 million monthly active users, but it is what it is

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