How to hide your online status on WhatsApp

By default, people you have chatted with can see the word "online" under your name while you have WhatsApp open. You can turn that off.

The steps

Go to Settings › Privacy › Last seen and online. Under Who can see when I’m online, choose Same as last seen. Then set last seen itself to My contacts, My contacts except, or Nobody. Online cannot be hidden from everyone on its own; it can only be made to follow your last seen setting, so the two work together.

What people see afterwards

Once online follows a restricted last seen, the people you excluded no longer see "online" when you are active, and no live state is shown to them at all.

Can trackers still see you?

No. A tracker can only report what WhatsApp makes public. Once your online status is hidden from someone, there is no public signal for an app to pick up, so hiding it protects you from tools as well as from people. This is also why, if you follow a number that has hidden its status, an online alert will stay silent for it: there is nothing to report.

The trade-off

Because last seen is reciprocal, hiding your own activity can cost you the ability to see others’. Setting last seen to Nobody hides everyone’s from you; My contacts except keeps that ability while still hiding you from the people you pick. The details are in how to turn off last seen.