All new Facebook chat sidebar (also called messaging sidebar) is causing lot of confusion and helplessness among Facebook users. We have already seen how to hide and remove new Facebook chat sidebar from Facebook account temporarily. If you want to appear offline or unavailable to specific Facebook friends on chat sidebar box – you need to use ‘Limit availability’ option. Using this option you can be online all the time and yet appear offline to specific friends on Facebook.
‘Limit Availability’ for offline to specific friends on chat
1. Once you login into Facebook account, check the new chat sidebar on the right side. By default, it will list name of Facebook friends with whom you interact the most – irrespective of their online status. Round icon next to names of friend indicate the online status.
2. Click on Options icon and then click ‘Limit Availability’ option. This will open a new pop-up box with title “Limit availability on Chat“.
3. Select either of ‘make me unavailable to’ or ‘only make me available to’ option from the drop down box. Then select Facebook List with specific friend names.
So, if you want to make yourself available or unavailable to specific Facebook friends – you need to create Facebook friends list for those friends and use it while using ‘Limit Availability’ option in new Facebook chat sidebar.
While this is useful for providing absolute control over your online visibility to each Facebook friend- implementation through Facebook Friends List require too much from user side. This for sure is strong incentive to start making Friends List – if you have not created one.
Video How-to: use ‘Limit Availability’ on Facebook
Go offline for every friend on Facebook chat sidebar
If you do not want to use Facebook chat feature, you can simply activate the offline mode. This will keep you logged out of the chat and other friends cannot discover your online status.
For this, click on Options icon and then click to uncheck (no tick) next to ‘Available to chat’ option. This will logout you from Facebook chat sidebar and set offline status.
