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  • Log out of Facebook Chat on iPhone?

Log out of Facebook Chat on iPhone?

August 15, 2013 / Dave Taylor / Facebook Help, iPhone & iOS Help / 4 Comments

This is driving me crazy: since my iPhone 5s is always on and online and since I’m running the Facebook app and it’s usually active on the phone, I always show up as available for online chat even when I’m far away from the device. What I’d like is to never have the iPhone Facebook app show me as on chat. How can I change this?

Umm… iPhone 5s? Are we talking Apple iPhones here? Are you running a secret prototype of the latest and greatest and slipped as you were typing in your question? Highly curious…

Regardless, however, you’re running the same iPhone operating system (iOS 6) and the same Facebook app whether you’re on a prototype or on a regular iPhone you picked up at the Apple Store or Best Buy. And so, the answer will be the same.

What’s confusing is that because of the way the Facebook mobile app is designed, the required setting isn’t where ya’d think it’d be. Let me show you.

First off, the Facebook app:

disable-iphone-facebook-chat-messages-1Logically, we should just tap on the menu button on the top left since that’s where most everything useful is located. Tap on it and…

disable-iphone-facebook-chat-messages-2There we go! “Messages”. But not quite so fast…

Tap on “Messages” and you get prompted to install yet another app from the Facebook team. As you can see here:

disable-iphone-facebook-chat-messages-3Definitely not what we want to do, and it clearly doesn’t help address the issue of hiding your online chat status.

Instead you need to go to the settings section of the Facebook app. That’s off the home screen, but on the top right. It’s the three horizontal lines with the tiny user profile. Tap on it and you get to the chat area:

disable-iphone-facebook-chat-messages-4What I find confusing about the Facebook app design is that on the Web version of Facebook, “messages” and “chat” are the same thing. On the iPhone, however, they’re seemingly different beasts. I have no explanation why.

The fix is easy, fortunately. See the gear icon on the top right of the grey section? Tap on it.

disable-iphone-facebook-chat-messages-5That’s it at the bottom. “Turn Off Chat”. That’s all you need.

Tap on it and suddenly you go offline:

disable-iphone-facebook-chat-messages-6The app will remember this setting until you change it, so once you’ve done this, you’re good to go and your Facebook pals will never again see you online and available for chat because of your iPhone app.

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Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!

4 comments on “Log out of Facebook Chat on iPhone?”

  1. Any says:
    February 2, 2015 at 7:49 am

    My app doesn’t remember I’m offline! Automatically puts me back online every time I use it, even when I turned online chat off before closing app???

    Reply
  2. Annie says:
    January 11, 2015 at 10:02 am

    Think most of us looking for an answer knew how to turn off chat. I think most people are wanting to know how to make the chat page NOT show others when the last time you were on your app. It will show last time you went into facebook even if chat is turned off. Kind of defeats the purpose of turning chat off. I’m pretty sure unfortunately, there is no way around this?

    Reply
    • anonymous says:
      March 6, 2015 at 2:45 am

      Use the kindle tablet to browse Facebook via Amazon silk browser, this browser doesn’t support the chat feature at all, you can’t be detected when your on Facebook through this browser from any other devices to you friends, I have this and I have tested it, it works, you cannot see the chat feature on this browser because it doesn’t exist on there, strange and some may say they can’t believe it because chat is apart of the Facebook website but I assure you it doesn’t exist on the silk browser, I guess that Amazon wire their kindle lines differently.

      Reply
    • Jon says:
      July 29, 2015 at 3:43 pm

      I agree…..I want to be a ghost if I turn off chat and not just hiding people from myself.

      Reply

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