Threads can now show you when people in your feed are online

You can turn on a new “activity status” to share when you’re on the app and see when other people are, too.

by Jay Peters

Oct 15, 2024, 5:35 PM UTC

Illustration: The Verge

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Jay Peters is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme.

Meta is adding an “activity status” to Threads so that you can see who’s actively online as you’re scrolling your feed. In a post, Threads boss Adam Mosseri pitches it as a “way to help you find others to engage with in real-time.” The activity status will show up next to your profile picture in the feed and on your profile, based on screenshots Mosseri shared.

A screenshot of Adam Mosseri’s post about the new activity status feature. The post reads: “We’re rolling out activity status as a way to help you find others to engage with in real-time. Only people who have activity status turned on will be able to see when you’re online, and you can turn this off within your settings at any time. We hope that knowing when your people are online makes it easier to have conversations.”

A screenshot of Adam Mosseri’s post about the feature on Threads — look for the green dots.

Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge

Fortunately, if you don’t want people to know when you’re online, you don’t have to share that. “Only people who have activity status turned on will be able to see when you’re online, and you can turn this off within your settings at any time,” Mosseri says.

I can’t currently find how to turn on the feature. It might be user error, but I’m guessing it just hasn’t rolled out to me yet. Even when I get it, I’ll probably be keeping it off.

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