Discord Status Meaning: Phone Icon and All Status Indicators Explained

When someone is active on Discord, their profile picture will be green. But this might not always be accurate. There’s also a green phone icon that appears alongside the standard green dot.

Discord’s presence system can be confusing, especially if you’re using the mobile app or the desktop version of the application. This is why we’ve put together this explanation to help clarify all the different status indicators you’ll see on your contacts in Discord.

Discord shows you when others are online via a green dot. When they’re away (either by leaving the app open or just being idle), it shows up as an orange circle. If they’re offline, then it simply doesn’t appear. The green phone icon, though, indicates whether the user is active on Discord’s mobile app, rather than on the desktop client.

The green phone icon specifically means the user is actively using the Discord app on their mobile device, including voice or video calls, while the green dot represents the user’s desktop activity. You might be wondering what happens when the user interacts with Discord’s mobile app but isn’t speaking or listening, such as just reading. In those cases, the green phone icon still appears.

Discord surfaces a Mobile Presence status as an additional status indicator for other users. So you won’t know when someone is on the Discord desktop client versus their mobile phone, unless you ask them yourself.

Discord’s main status options

Discord allows you to show your availability in one of four ways:

Online

Idle

Do Not Disturb

Invisible

Each status communicates something different to others who might message or call you on Discord. Setting your status involves tapping or clicking your profile picture, choosing which status you’d like to set, and saving your changes. While most people don’t alter their settings too often, there are times when Discord automatically updates your status without any input from you.

Discord sets your Idle status automatically when you haven’t been interacting with Discord or have left the application entirely, at least five minutes ago. It applies to both the Discord desktop client (Windows, Mac) and the mobile application. You don’t need to do anything manually; it happens automatically.

Do Not Disturb status signals to other users that you’re unavailable. Unlike when you’re Idle, where other users might contact you and potentially disturb you, Do Not Disturb signals that you’re definitely unavailable. Other Discord users won’t be able to message or call you right away without it going against the status you’ve set.

Invisible means exactly what it sounds like: you’re invisible to others, and they won’t know that you’re logged into Discord. Users choose Invisible status so that other users don’t know when they’re online. That could allow a user to read through conversations, for instance, without letting others know that they’re logged on to Discord. Community members have even described how they use Invisible status simply to read messages from others without anyone else knowing.

How to hide the green phone icon

While Discord doesn’t explicitly explain it, you can suppress the green phone icon from being visible by setting your Online status to Invisible. The green phone icon essentially represents your mobile presence on Discord, and setting your status to Invisible hides your mobile presence, along with your presence on desktop Discord, from others.

On both Discord’s mobile and desktop applications, simply tap or click your profile picture and then select from either Online, Idle, Do Not Disturb, or Invisible to change your availability to others.