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Steam: How to Hide Recent Game Activity and Playtime

Use Steam’s Private setting to hide one game’s activity and hours, or adjust profile privacy and presence for broader visibility changes.
Length3 min Posted Quest giverVGSources Team
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To hide a specific game’s recent activity and hours from other Steam users, mark that game Private. To change who can see your profile more broadly, adjust Profile Privacy Settings; to appear offline while keeping chat available, choose Invisible. These controls do different jobs.

Hide one game’s recent activity and hours

Mark the game Private in Steam. Steam says this hides your ownership, in-game status, playtime and activity for that title. It also removes the game from your Community profile’s games list and recently played section, and suppresses activity such as achievement unlocks and first-play notices in friends’ Activity feeds. While the game is private, showcases do not display it or its achievements. See Steam Support’s Private Games guidance for the current details.

  1. Steam client: Open the game’s Manage submenu by right-clicking the game in your Library, or use the gear icon on its details page. Choose the privacy option to mark it private. You can also open the game’s Properties and find the setting under Privacy. Steam says the client option requires the client to be online and connected.
  2. Web browser: Open your games list on your Steam Community profile and use the game’s privacy control there.
  3. Before buying: You can mark a game private in the shopping cart before completing the purchase.

If a label or menu has moved in your client, use the linked Steam Support page to check the current path.

Change who can see your Steam profile

For account-wide profile visibility, open your Steam profile, select Edit Profile, then Privacy Settings. Choose Public, Friends Only or Private. Steam says changes save automatically. These settings govern profile visibility; they are separate from making an individual game private. For the current controls, see Steam Profile Privacy.

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Steam’s privacy options also cover who can comment on your profile and view your inventory. The exact profile components and controls are shown on the settings page, so check it directly rather than assuming one privacy choice governs every surface in the same way.

Appear offline without hiding a particular game

In Friends & Chat, set your presence to Invisible to appear offline to other players while retaining access to your friends list, messages and the Steam community. Offline signs you out of the Steam community, so features that depend on being online will not work. By default, Online lets friends see when you are online and shows you as in-game while playing. Steam explains these presence modes in its Friends & Chat guidance.

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Private is different from Hidden

Private changes what other people can see about a game. Hidden is a Library organization setting: it hides the title from your own client’s Library list, not from other users. A private game remains visible to you. Steam describes the distinction in its Private Games guidance.

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What Private does not conceal

  • In a private game using Steam matchmaking, your Steam ID is visible to other players on the same server.
  • If you invite a friend to join, Steam says that friend can see your in-game status until you exit or disconnect, so they can join.
  • A private title will not appear in the store’s “Friends who own this game” section, and friends will not see it as owned when trying to gift it to you.
  • Steam says private games do not grant Steam Trading Cards while marked private.

These settings control visibility on the Steam surfaces Steam describes. They should not be treated as a promise that game-side records are erased or that your identity is concealed in multiplayer. For the stated exceptions, see Steam’s Private Games FAQ and Steam’s privacy and safety guidance.

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