How to hide what game you’re playing on Discord [GUIDE]

General
1

How to hide what game you’re playing on Discord (and why you should)

dude shoutout to whoever asked about this in another thread. been meaning to do a writeup because the “how to” answer everyone gives is like step one of like five things you should actually be doing if you care about this.

the basic toggle: User Settings > Activity Privacy > flip “share your detected activities with others on your profile” to off. that hides the “playing X” status from your friends. easy mode done.

the deeper stuff:

activity privacy is just the visibility layer. discord still detects every game you launch and stores that data on their servers regardless of whether your friends can see it. it shows up in your data package as activity logs. so if your concern is “what does discord know” not “what do my friends see,” the toggle does basically nothing.

if you actually want discord to stop registering your game launches at all, you have to disable the entire game detection system: User Settings > Registered Games > delete the games it has detected, then User Settings > Activity Status > tggle off “display current activity as a status message.” that’s the closest you get to opting out.

why you should care:

  1. game activity is a behavioral fingerprint. timestamps of when you’re gaming reveal your work schedule, sleep schedule, weekend patterns. anyone with access to your account history can map your life.

  2. specificgames can be identifying or sensitive. some games are associated with subcultures, political views , or just stuff you wouldn’t want a future employer or family member to know about.

  3. third-party app integrations like spotify show up here too. that’s how your friends see what you’re listening to. could be cute, could be way to much information depending on what’s in your queue lol

if any of those bother you, do a deeper cleanup. if they don’t, the basic toggle is totally fine.

2

Bloody hell I had no idea the registered games list was a separate thing from the activity privacy toggle. Just looked at mine and it goes back five years. Discord knew about every dodgy free-to-play I’d ever installed lol. Cleaned it out matecheers.

3

Y’all are missing the bigger picture. All these game launch timestamps don’t onlygo to Discord. Steam knows. Epic knows. Riot knows. Microsoft knows if you’re on Xbox. Every storefront has its own activity log and most of them are tied to your real name and payment info…think about it.

Hiding it on Discord is reasonable but if you’re worried about this, you’ve got a lot more fish to fry.

4

ay this is the thread i didn’t know i needed jaja :skull: just turned off everything. i was sharing spotify activity for years and i guarantee my exes and ex-best-friends saw way too many late night sad-girlplaylists que embarrassing

5

Hell, this explains why my kid keeps yelling at me to turn this stuff off. He kept telling me his friends could see I was on the same game as him at 2am on a Tuesday and I was like, so what? Now I get it. Turned the activity privacy off. Pride intact.

heres a good video for those who like to learn visually

6

The registered games list is the real gotcha and very few people know about it.

7

This is helpful… I had not realized any of this… I have always wanted to disable tyhat but didn’t know how. Thank you for explaining clearly.

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If you want the historical registered games gone, request your data package, see exactly what’s in there, then request data deletion through the privacy form. The toggle controls FUTURE collection but the audit + deletion request is the only way to handle the EXISTING records. takes about 3-4 weeks to process, I think.