Can You Hide Offline Members In Discord?

A little while ago, smaller servers would have a list of offline members. As soon as your server hit 100 members it would disappear. With recent changes, that list now stays regardless of how large your server is, but can you hide offline members in Discord? Can you turn this list off?


Unfortunately, you cannot turn this off right now. Discord said they were adding the ability for owners or admins of large servers to be able to see offline members as an extra feature. It’s a real shame they didn’t also add the ability to turn this list off too. It’s not an issue for the @everyone group as they don’t appear there but for admins it’s an extra step to knowing who is on the server.

There are requests on the Discord feedback forum to add a toggle for this list but it has yet to be implemented. In the meantime, the momentary relief we had when our server hit 100 members and the offline list disappeared is now a thing of the past.

If your server seems to have too many offline members, what can you do to reduce that?

Pruning in Discord

The term pruning is a gardening term that means to trim a plant or bush of the dead parts to encourage growth. It’s an apt term to use here too. By removing offline members, you trim down your server so only active users are there and you have less admin to do. There is also a side benefit of removing any alt accounts trolls may have left on your server in advance of making trouble. It’s a small thing but every little helps.

Server owners can prune their servers periodically so that inactive members are removed and only those who join in chat remain. You have to be careful when pruning to not remove valuable members who might be on vacation or doing something else but for the most part, pruning servers is a valuable pastime for owners.

You will need to be the server owner or admin to do this.

Here’s how to prune a server in Discord on desktop:

  1. Open the server you want to prune and select Server Settings.
  2. Select the Members tab.
  3. Select the Prune text link at the top.
  4. Select a time limit in the popup window and select Prune.

Here’s how to prune a server in Discord on mobile:

  1. Open the server you want to prune and select Server Settings by hitting the three dots icon and select the gear icon.
  2. Scroll down and select members.
  3. Select the three dots icon at the right top of the screen.
  4. Choose prune in the pop-up window.
  5. Select a time limit in the popup window and select Prune.

The prune tool will tell you how many members will be removed when you select a time limit in the popup box. I would suggest using 30 days as the limit as 1 or 7 days could just be a vacation or road trip. Few people go away for 30 days so is a fairer time to kick inactive members. It is entirely up to you though.

Members with roles will not be pruned. You have to do that manually. It will only remove inactive users from the @everyone group and not admins, moderators or any custom roles you may have created.

I don’t understand why there is even a 1 day setting as we are all inactive on Discord at one time or another. You can understand 7 days for more active or for thriving servers but a single day?

Using the prune tool in Discord

The prune tool is valuable for server owners but can also be devastating in the wrong hands. If you’re the server owner, keep access to this tool restricted and be very careful who you share it with. Done well, pruning can help maintain a healthy server and encourage growth. Used incorrectly and things can go very wrong very quickly.

This story on Reddit is a case in point. A server owner delegated the prune tool to members he initially trusted only for one rogue to prune every member who had been inactive for 1 day. That’s a dangerous setting and I genuinely don’t know why it’s there. In this case, the server lost half its membership in one go and the rogue admin left too.

As that post goes on to explain, anyone you give admin permissions to can prune. If you want to restrict pruning on a server, you have to remove all kick and ban permissions from your admins. That’s not a practical solution but it’s all we have right now.

It’s a shame you cannot hide offline members in Discord, or better control who can prune and who cannot. However it is what it is and we make do with what we have. Do you know of any effective ways to hide offline members or control who can prune and who cannot? Know of any bots that can prune? Tell us about it below if you do!