Steam is excellent for keeping tabs on your friends – you can easily see who’s online, what they’re playing and whether they’re available.
Although this characteristic sounds fantastic for the majority of users on this immensely popular gaming platform, others might feel that it brings a lack of privacy.
To make matters worse, Steam doesn’t provide its users with a very obvious way of hiding their recent activity. However, there are quite a few workarounds that should help you achieve a blank game activity feed if you want one.
We will explain everything you need to know in the following sections. Let’s jump into it.
Note: This is different from appearing offline or “going invisible” on Steam. See our other helpful guide where we cover changing your Steam profile activity status.
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Understanding The “Recent Activity” Profile Section On Steam
If you are a newer Steam user, it’s possible that you aren’t fully aware of the activity section yet, but most experienced Steam users are. Don’t worry, as we will explain everything in detail shortly.
To view your Recent Activity section on Steam and get a better idea of what we’re talking about, follow the steps below.
- Open Steam on your PC and sign in to your account.
- Once the client loads, click on your account name on the top-bar menu and choose Profile.
- Scroll down to the bottom, where you can see your Recent Activity Section.
As you can see, this section shows the last game you’ve played, how many hours you spent playing it during the past two weeks, the date on which you played, your achievement progress, review for that particular title, and more.
This is also shown for two other games, totaling three games you last played on your account.
For some users, this is quite a lot of information to share, and some even consider it a privacy concern. With this in mind, it’s easy to understand why the community started looking for ways to disable the Recent Activity section on their profiles.
Thankfully, we now have a few workarounds prepared for you. Find out all about them in the following sections.
Method 1: Using Steam’s Built-In Privacy Settings
This method is the simplest among the techniques in this guide and doesn’t need anything beyond adjusting Steam’s default configurations.
Here’s how to do it:
- Open the Steam client on your PC and sign in to your account.
- From the menu at the top, click on your profile’s name and then choose Profile.
- Under your Steam profile level, you will see an Edit Profile button. Click it.
- In the left-bar menu, choose Privacy Settings, which should be the last option on the list.
- Under the My Profile section, find the Game Details setting and set it to Private.
That’s it! You don’t have to do anything else to keep your changes, as Steam will automatically save them when you modify the settings.
You can test this change by copying your profile URL and pasting it to an Incognito window in Chrome, which will show your profile the way other users see it.
Please remember: You can utilize any alternate browser for conducting this examination. Simply ensure that you are not logged into Steam during the process, as this may cause you to perceive your profile as an owner.
Method 2: The “Free Watchable Episodes” Method
This might sound like a strange solution at first. Even so, this is one of the most efficient workarounds for users who want to completely hide their Recent Activity section on Steam.
This method is also used by many profile customization enthusiasts who want to achieve the look of a “glitched out” Steam profile, which is how most users found out about it. We owe a big thanks to the Steam profile modding community for their creativity.
Here’s what you need to do:
- Open Steam on your PC and sign in to your account.
- Once the client loads, click on Store and search for Making of Fury.
- When the list of episodes loads, click Watch on the first episode. A small window will open, and you should close it as soon as possible.
- Do this twice more, and your Recent Activity section will be completely blank.
Now for a bit of an explanation of what just happened.
When you click the Watch button on any viewable episode on Steam, in this instance, Making of Fury, Steam detects that a new activity is being added. However, as you close the window so rapidly, it cannot identify what it is that you just commenced watching.
As a result, the blank field will replace one of the three games in your Recent Activity section. If you repeat this two more times, all three fields will become blank, meaning your Recent Activity section won’t show any games.
However, the next time you start a game, it will be added. You can always repeat the process with the free watchable episodes to clear the section again.
Method 3: Replacing The Games You Want To Hide With Others
To understand how this works, remember that Steam’s Recent Activity section displays the last three games you played in their respective order.
For example, if you played Counter-Strike last, it will be the first of the three games displayed in the Recent Activity section on your profile.
With that said, if you recently played a game you don’t want others to see on your profile, but you’re fine with them seeing the other games you play (and you don’t want to hide your Recent Activity section or set your profile to private), you can always use this strategy.
- Open Steam on your PC and sign in to your account.
- Open your game library and start a game you don’t mind others seeing as your recent activity.
- Exit the game after a minute, and repeat this step twice.
Doing this will ensure there aren’t any games you don’t want others to see in your Recent Activity tab. All it takes is a few minutes of your time.
Note: If you want the games to be displayed in order, the one you want to have displayed first needs to be the last one you start and exit.
Conclusion
You now know how to hide your Recent Activity on Steam using three different methods, so use this knowledge if you desire more privacy or simply want to give your profile a “stealthier” look with less information about the types of content you enjoy.