How to Appear Offline in League of Legends
League of Legends has no built-in way to appear offline: the client’s status menu only offers Online and Away, and Away still shows you on your friends list. To truly hide, players use the open-source tool Deceive or block the Riot Client’s chat port in Windows Firewall. Both work, but both come with trade-offs, covered below.
Can you appear offline in League of Legends?
Not with a native button. Players have asked Riot for an invisible mode for well over a decade (the old official boards had threads about it back in the legacy client days), and the answer has never turned into a feature. Steam has it, and so does Battle.net. The Riot Client doesn’t.
What you can do is pick one of four workarounds, from “barely hides anything” to “you vanish completely.” Which one fits depends on why you want to hide. Dodging a friend who always wants to duo needs less than hiding from stream snipers.
| Method | Friends see you? | You see friends? | Effort |
|---|---|---|---|
| Away status | Yes, marked Away | Yes | One click |
| Deceive | No, you show as offline | Yes | Download once, launch through it |
| Firewall rule on port 5223 | No, you show as offline | No, chat stops working | One command |
| Separate account | Not on your main’s list | Only friends you add | New account or buy one |
Method 1: set your status to Away
Click the status indicator under your name in the top-right of the client and switch it from Online to Away. The dot next to your name changes colour and your friends’ lists show “Away” under your name instead of “Online”. That’s the whole thing.
Honestly, it’s a polite signal more than a hiding place. You still sit in the online group of every friend’s list, whispers and lobby invites still arrive, and the moment you enter champion select your status switches to show that you’re in a game. Use Away when you want two or three fewer duo requests per evening, not when you want nobody to know you’re playing.
Method 2: appear offline with Deceive
Deceive is the closest thing League has to a real invisible mode. It’s a free, open-source program published on GitHub (not made or endorsed by Riot) that sits between your client and Riot’s chat server. Friends see you as offline, while you keep all 300, or however many, friends visible, can still whisper people and can still invite them to a five-player lobby.
- Download the latest release from the project’s official GitHub page. Avoid re-uploads on other sites.
- Close League of Legends and the Riot Client completely.
- Run Deceive and choose League of Legends when it asks which game to launch.
- Log in as usual. A message from Deceive in your chat confirms you’re hidden.
- To show up again, use the option in Deceive’s tray icon or launch the client normally next time.
Is Deceive allowed? To be fair, nobody can give a guarantee here: Riot hasn’t published an official position on it either way. It doesn’t touch League’s game files, only the presence signal sent to Riot’s chat server, and it has been maintained on GitHub across many client patches. Still, it’s third-party software, so download it only from the original repository and accept that a Riot Client update can break it for a few days. When a patch breaks it, the usual fix is waiting for the next tagged release on GitHub.
Method 3: block the chat port in Windows Firewall
This one needs no extra software. Riot’s port forwarding page lists TCP 5222 and 5223 for the Riot Client, and 5223 carries chat and presence. Block it, and the client can’t tell Riot you’re online.
- Close the client fully.
- Open Command Prompt as administrator.
- Run: netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name=”lolchat” dir=out remoteport=5223 protocol=TCP action=block
- Launch League. Chat and the friends list won’t connect, and friends see you as offline.
- To undo it, run: netsh advfirewall firewall delete rule name=”lolchat”
The catch is that it’s all or nothing. You can’t see who’s online, can’t whisper anyone and can’t invite friends, because the client has no connection on port 5223 at all. Party invites, clash team lobbies and the friends panel can misbehave until you delete the rule (if your connection seems broken in other ways, our guide to fixing LoL connection problems lists every Riot port). It’s a decent option for a solo grinding session and a bad one if you ever want to queue with someone.
Method 4: play on a different account
A second account has none of your friends on it, so nobody sees you there unless you add them. It’s the most reliable way to appear offline to your main friends list, and it’s the reason a lot of streamers and high-ranked players keep one. Riot’s rules apply to every account you own, though, so the same behaviour standards and penalties follow you there.
If you want one without levelling a fresh account from scratch, our League of Legends accounts are hand-levelled to 30 by our team and come with an unverified email you replace with your own. Fair warning that buying accounts goes against Riot’s Terms of Service, so weigh that before you choose this route.
Why players want to appear offline
The reasons are usually ordinary. Some people want one quiet game after work without five duo invites. Others want to practise a new champion without friends watching their match history live (a 0/7 Yasuo debut is nobody’s business). Streamers deal with stream snipers who watch a Twitch broadcast, see when queue pops and try to land in the same match. Why make it easier for them? Hiding their presence removes one of the two or three signals snipers rely on.
Then there’s plain social fatigue. Look, nobody owes their friends list a live update. Long story short, a friends list of a few hundred people collected over years of ranked games gets noisy, and an invisible mode is the gentlest way to opt out for an evening without removing anybody.
Alternatives that hide less but help more
Sometimes appearing offline isn’t really the goal; avoiding certain people or chat is. A few built-in options handle that better:
- Remove or block a specific friend from the friends list if one person is the problem.
- Mute players in game with /mute and their name, or keep them muted across games with /ignore.
- Turn chat off entirely for a calmer game; our guide on how to disable chat in League of Legends walks through every setting.
- Sort your list into groups and collapse the busy ones so the noise is out of sight.
Blocking is also reversible. A blocked player drops off your friends list and can’t send you invites, friend requests or whispers, and you can unblock them later from the friends panel. For most of the situations that make people search for an invisible mode, such as an ex, a toxic former duo partner or a coworker who found your summoner name, that’s enough. Put simply, no tools.
Common problems and fixes
Deceive stops working after a patch: the Riot Client changed something. Wait for an updated release and don’t download “fixed” versions from random sites. Friends still see you in game: you probably launched League directly instead of through Deceive, so close everything and relaunch through it. Chat stays broken after the firewall method: the rule is still active, so run the delete command and restart the client.
One more thing worth knowing: none of these methods hides your match history. Anyone who looks you up on a stats site or in the client can still see your recent games once they finish, so appear offline keeps you out of the friends list, not out of the record.
FAQ
Can you appear offline in League of Legends?
Not natively. The League client only offers Online and Away statuses. To appear offline, players use the third-party tool Deceive or block the Riot Client chat port in Windows Firewall.
Is Deceive safe to use?
Deceive is open source and only changes your chat presence, not the game. Riot has not published an official position on it, so download it only from its official GitHub page.
Does the Away status hide me?
No. Away only changes your status indicator. Friends still see you in the online section of their list and can message or invite you.
Which port does the firewall method block?
TCP port 5223, one of the Riot Client ports on Riot’s port forwarding page. Blocking it stops chat and the friends list entirely until the rule is removed.
Can friends see my match history if I appear offline?
Yes. Appearing offline only hides your presence on friends lists. Finished games still show in your match history.
Will Riot add an appear offline option?
Riot has not announced one. Players have requested it for years, but as of October 2026 the client still has no invisible status.
