One of the tools that Facebook provides to users is chatting through instant message. The chat indicator in the lower right hand corner of your Facebook page shows you which of your friends are online when you are. If you want to chat with someone, click on their name, type in a message and press send or hit enter. Then a box pops up on their screen with the chat request. This is a fun way to reconnect with old friends or speak quickly with someone privately. However, some people find it is annoying. Maybe you use Facebook at work and do not want to be bothered with chat requests or maybe you just want to use Facebook passively. Some people simply don’t want to be forced into awkward conversations with long lost friends or people you aren’t comfortable chatting with. Regardless of the reason why, if you are not interested in receiving Facebook pop up chat requests, there is something you can do about it.
To stop chat requests do the following:
1) Find the “Chat” bar on your Facebook profile. To do this log on to your Facebook account and look at the bottom right hand side of the screen. You will see the chat bar followed by a number, which indicates how many of your friends are online and available to chat. In addition you will see the notifications icon.
2) Click on the icon that says “Chat #”. When you click on it, a list of the people online and available to chat should pop up. If you see a quarter moon next to their name, they have been inactive on Facebook for more than 15 minutes. Others will have a green circle next to their name, which indicates that they are active and available to chat with you. If you look at the top of the list, you will see two different bars. One says “Friends list” while the second says “Options”.
3) Choose “Options” by clicking on it, and then, from the drop down menu, select “Go Offline.” When you click this, it does not log you off of Facebook, just Facebook chat. You can still write on people’s walls, update your status and look at photos and videos. It just disables the chat feature for your page. In other words you can be logged on to Facebook but you will appear offline.
If you decide you want to enable the pop up chat requests again, simply click on the chat bar again. You do not have to indicate you want to go back online, it will do it automatically if you click the bar. Even if you log out of Facebook and log back in, Facebook will remember your settings and keep you off chat.
