My Status keeps going Online

[INFERNAL NEON]

When i try to roam around in steam, or basically let it run in the background in Away status, apperantly out of nowhere it becames Online so people start to message me , beacuse im online. Why does it happen? And i do know invisible exist, but i much rather stay on away, basically im online but i dont want to be bothered. Is there a fix for this?

[voidCaster]

Since you apparently don't know about "Invisible" and "Do Not Disturb" modes I'm guessing that you're entering "Away Mode" because you're idle, and then you come back and dink around so you're not idle, so Away Mode cancels itself. This is normal and expected behavior, and is common across all kinds of chat and messaging apps dating to the original ICQ in the 1990s and going forward through Yahoo and AOL Messengers, MSN Messenger, Skype, Discord, etc etc.

Go look at your Friends List in Steam Client. On the Friends List, your profile name and status and avatar are in the upper left, with a down-arrow on the right of your name. Click that.

Select any mode. Try them out. See which one you like best for lurking.

[INFERNAL NEON]

Originally posted by Nyx:

Since you apparently don't know about "Invisible" and "Do Not Disturb" modes I'm guessing that you're entering "Away Mode" because you're idle, and then you come back and dink around so you're not idle, so Away Mode cancels itself. This is normal and expected behavior, and is common across all kinds of chat and messaging apps dating to the original ICQ in the 1990s and going forward through Yahoo and AOL Messengers, MSN Messenger, Skype, Discord, etc etc.

Go look at your Friends List in Steam Client. On the Friends List, your profile name and status and avatar are in the upper left, with a down-arrow on the right of your name. Click that.

Select any mode. Try them out. See which one you like best for lurking.

Eh, i do? I belive you tough i was talking about being away while being idle, and no i said i was putting it myself via friendlist chat.

It started to happen like in few weeks , back then me putting my status on Away always made me stay away even if i playing games, watching brodcasts, surfing on forum and NEVER made me go online. Thanks for the input, and some history ,but i already know about it unless if they recently changed it to even if you put it on away it is still the idle Away mechanic.

[voidCaster]

Originally posted by Infernal Neon:

Originally posted by Nyx:

Since you apparently don't know about "Invisible" and "Do Not Disturb" modes I'm guessing that you're entering "Away Mode" because you're idle, and then you come back and dink around so you're not idle, so Away Mode cancels itself. This is normal and expected behavior, and is common across all kinds of chat and messaging apps dating to the original ICQ in the 1990s and going forward through Yahoo and AOL Messengers, MSN Messenger, Skype, Discord, etc etc.

Go look at your Friends List in Steam Client. On the Friends List, your profile name and status and avatar are in the upper left, with a down-arrow on the right of your name. Click that.

Select any mode. Try them out. See which one you like best for lurking.

Eh, i do? I belive you tough i was talking about being away while being idle, and no i said i was putting it myself via friendlist chat.

It started to happen like in few weeks , back then me putting my status on Away always made me stay away even if i playing games, watching brodcasts, surfing on forum and NEVER made me go online. Thanks for the input, and some history ,but i already know about it unless if they recently changed it to even if you put it on away it is still the idle Away mechanic.

So I would have sworn, before I went looking, that Steam actually had an option in the Friends List Options as to whether Away should cancel on activity or not. I started in the Steam Client->Settings and the Friends menu isn't even there anymore. I went into the Friends List instead and clicked on the little gear in the upper right. Sure enough, no such option in any menu on there either.

I'd still swear it used to be there. As common and expected as the Away/Cancel-By-Activity feature is, the ability to stay away until you change it yourself is just as common and expected for those who prefer it - as is your expectation that manually setting Away actively prevents auto-cancel. So yeah. Steam needs to quit outsourcing to the lowest bidder for everything from account security to interface and feature design (or re-design in this case - I will swear in a court of law that this used to behave as you expect it to).

Maybe you need to manually elect Away Mode and then check the Do Not Disturb box, now. I never dink with my status myself, apart from being online or offline.

[SeriousCCIE]

That's how I remember it with the old client; Away stayed in that mode if you manually set it; if went into the mode prior to 'sleeping' or something, then when it detected you were around, it woke up to whatever the default was.

In the new client, you can't just use away. I find that I can list myself as offline and it still shows me how many friends of mine are online, which tells me that perhaps the chat client really isn't treating me as offline, but is just pretending to keep users that want to be offline under the illusion they are. I don't know.

Anyway, invisible is what you will probably need to use in order to accomplish the away -- people can still message you and whatever else when you are online but away--perhaps you'll read it when you come back. But when invisible, no one knows if you are there.

I'm more of an offline until I want to do something that requires me to be offline kinda guy, which means I don't appreciate the way the present system works, and mostly have stopped utilizing the chat client.

I only see the issue I referenced when I install steam on a different computer and have to change the local profile preferences.

[Muppet among Puppets]

Maintenance puts you online.
And when you start steam, you must set online and then away manually to keep it on away. Otherwise it would switch to online soon if you just kept away from last time steam ran

[Zvitatzki]

nothing maintance this annoying me as hell too it forces to answer pms i got while i put away in a reason and offline or invisible is not the same thing

if we put on auto by self it should stay away and not go everytime back to online

im waiting this to be fixed since months