How can you idle on facebook

Friends are considered idle on Facebook when they have been completely inactive on the site for 10 minutes or longer. Activity refers not only to someone using the chat feature, but also navigating around on the site's profile pages or using any other feature. Once your friend points her browser back to Facebook, she stops being idle and goes back to being available for chat.

An idle friend is represented by a light gray half moon next to her name in your list of friends in chat. The symbol also appears next to friends' names when you visit their profiles while you are logged into chat. As soon as a friend becomes available again, a green circle appears next to her name.

If the symbol disappears altogether, she has gone offline in chat. While an idle Facebook friend is not actively on the site, because she is still online, your messages will pop up on his computer screen. Privacy, Safety and Security. Policies and Reporting. How do I temporarily deactivate my Facebook account? Change platform:. You can deactivate your account temporarily and choose to come back whenever you want.

To deactivate your account:. When your account is deactivated:. Keep in mind that if you choose to keep Messenger active or are logged into Messenger when you deactivate your Facebook account, then Messenger will remain active. Learn how to deactivate Messenger. When your Facebook account is deactivated, but you still have Messenger:. Reactivating your account:.

As of late , however, that functionality was removed. Now users with green circles are available, users with mobile phone icons can be reached on mobile devices and those with no sign next to their names can be reached through Facebook messages, which can be sent through the chat window. The contact list on Facebook is split into two parts. The first part, the top list, shows friends you've recently interacted with or friends that you interact with on a regular basis.

This list changes as you use Facebook; you can not change it yourself. The lower list -- labeled More Friends -- shows friends that are currently active on Facebook and logged into chat. One way a person can tell whether or not a friend is idle on Facebook is the Seen feature. When you send a message to a contact, the chat window lets you know whether the person has seen it. The message includes the time the message was viewed.