Do you want an Epic Games appear offline setting because you don't want to be disturbed while you attempt to have some downtime? A break from the constant noise of everyday life. Me time.
We get it. We want to give you some of that precious solitude by explaining what your options are for appearing offline while you use Epic Games. While we won't pretend to offer a perfect solution, it's still better than nothing.
Before you get started, you may want to know which email address is linked to your Epic Games account. But once you're signed in, here's what you need to know about appearing offline.
Does Epic Games Have An Appear Offline Mode?
The Epic Games Store has been around since 2018. So it's no longer wet behind the ears. And yet, it still doesn't offer players the option of setting their profile to "appear offline".
While it's understandable that Epic Games would seek to encourage multiplayer participation at all times, it seems slightly strange that they won't allow players to choose to be invisible, if they so wish.
Many people use the internet to play games with others, but there are times when they prefer to play alone. However, it might feel impolite to ignore or reject invitations from other players. Currently, there are a few awkward ways to deal with this issue, but they are just temporary solutions until Epic Games decides to add a better function.
How to appear offline on Epic Games
As we said above, there isn't a specific "appear offline" function offered by Epic games. This means we have to use some alternative options. Some of these are perfect if you are happy playing games offline, but won't work if you want to play online.
Play offline
Obviously, this option is only going to work for games that can be played offline. So no Fortnite for you with this. But if you are happy to play offline, here's what you do:
- Log in to Epic Games and click on your profile picture.
- Go to Settings, and tick the box next to Enable Offline Mode Browsing.
- Next, you need to disconnect your computer from the internet, and then close Epic Games.
- Restart your computer.
- Relaunch Epic Games, sign in, and you'll then have access to your offline library.
Games you play offline won't sync until you reconnect to the internet, and be aware that if they have any online features, those will be unavailable.
Sign out of the launcher
If you sign out, you will still be able to access your games. You won't however, be able to save any progress. Again, this will be fine for some games, but not others.
And once again, when you're signed out, you won't be able to play games that require you to be signed in, such as Fortnite.
Change in-game settings
It is possible in some games to appear offline, which will do much of the job that Epic Games won't.
If this option exists, it varies from game to game exactly how to go about it. Typically, the first place you should look is the in-game Settings menu.
From there, you may be able to change settings such as marking your online status to Away, or setting your Party Privacy to Private. This is how it works for Fortnite, at least.
As we said earlier, these are by no means perfect solutions. But they do offer some ways of avoiding intrusive invitations from people. One final option is to create a second account which you don't use for playing with friends.
The benefit of this is that you can still access free-to-play games such as Fortnite. The drawback is that you won't be able to access games from your original games library. It's up to you to decide whether that would be a viable solution or not.