Availability and presence
Other people see two different things about you. Availability is what you choose — Available or Busy. Presence is what the app works out on its own: whether you are connected right now, what you are typing, and which kind of device you are on.
Set your availability
Your availability lives on your profile.
| Platform | How to get there |
|---|---|
| Web | Select Profile in the sidebar, then the Profile row |
| iOS and Android | Open the Profile tab, then the Profile row |
The screen is titled Edit profile. Its Status section is a single switch reading Available or Busy — green when you are available, red when you are busy. There is nothing to save; flipping the switch takes effect immediately and everyone sees the change straight away.
Those two are the only states you set. HushChat has no "away" or "do not disturb" to choose from, and no way to schedule a status or write your own.
Being Busy is a signal, not a barrier. It does not stop messages, calls or notifications reaching you — it tells people what to expect before they write. To actually go quiet, mute the conversation; see Notifications and sounds.
Say where you are working
Directly under Status is Working from Home, another one-switch section reading Working from Home or In Office, saved the moment you flip it.
When you are working from home, people see a small house icon and the words Working from Home under your name at the top of your one-to-one conversation with them.
The dot on the avatar
Everywhere your avatar appears in a private chat — in the conversation list and at the top of the conversation — a small dot in its lower corner says how you are right now.
| Dot | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Green | Online — connected and available |
| Red | Busy |
| Grey | Offline — not connected at the moment |
When HushChat knows which kind of device someone is on, the plain dot is replaced by a tiny icon in the same colour: a laptop when they are on the web app, a phone when they are on their mobile. The colour still means the same thing, so you read the state and the device in one glance.
The dot is a private-chat thing. Group avatars never carry one, because a group is not one person and has no single state to show.
Who can see your presence
Your availability travels to the people you have a one-to-one conversation with, and it reaches them while they have HushChat open. It is not published to the whole workspace, and there is no directory of who is online.
There is no history to any of this. HushChat shows the state as it is now — there is no "last seen", no record of when you were online, and nothing for anyone to look back through.
Typing indicators
While somebody is writing to you, HushChat says so under their name at the top of the conversation, followed by three animated dots.
| Where | What it reads |
|---|---|
| A private chat | typing |
| A group, one person | The person's name, then is typing |
| A group, two people | Both names, then are typing |
| A group, more than two | The first name, then and the number of others, then are typing |
The indicator clears by itself a few seconds after someone stops, and it clears when they send the message. Nothing is recorded — once it disappears there is no trace that anyone was typing.
A typing indicator is the one presence signal you cannot switch off, on either side. If you would rather not announce a long message you are composing, write it somewhere else and paste it in.
When presence looks wrong
Presence depends on a live connection, so a few things explain most surprises:
- Someone shows grey but replies immediately. They were reconnecting — a phone that has just come back from sleep or a laptop off Wi-Fi looks offline until it reconnects.
- Your own status looks stale to somebody else. They see the state from when their app last heard from you. Reopening or refreshing the app pulls the current one.
- You set Busy but people still write. That is expected. Busy informs; it does not block.
- A group shows no dot at all. That is by design — see above.
Your availability is per workspace member, not per device. Setting Busy on your phone shows you as busy to everyone, including people talking to you from the web app.