Secretly playing your Nintendo Switch can be difficult, as Nintendo notifies all of your friends when you launch a game by default, and they can see if you are online through their friends list. Fortunately, you can always show up offline if you want. Here̵
First activate your Switch and press the “Home” button. On the home screen, select your user profile icon, which is located in the top left corner of the screen.
You will then see your profile page. Choose ‘User Settings’ from the sidebar menu.
In ‘User Settings’, scroll down the page and choose ‘Friend Settings’.
In ‘Friend settings’, select ‘View online status until’.
Select ‘Nobody’ from the ‘View Online Status Until’ menu that appears.
(You can also decide to only share your online status with friends marked as ‘Best Friends’. In that case, select ‘Best Friends’ here.)
After the change has been registered, you can exit your profile settings. From now on, your Nintendo Switch friends will not receive a notification when you are online or playing a game.
How to hide play activity from friends
Even if your online status is hidden from friends, they may still see your gaming activity – the list of games you’ve recently played that will be displayed on your profile page. To disable playback activity, go to your profile page and select User Settings> Playback Activity Settings.
In “Playback Activity Settings”, set “Show Playback Activity On” to “None.
Once set, exit your profile settings by pressing the “Home” button. The next time your friends look at your profile, they won’t see a list of games you’ve recently played. Have fun gaming!
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