If you have been on LinkedIn for a while, you may have started to wonder what those little green dots mean. You probably wouldn’t be here if you didn’t know but in case anyone is still a little confused, those green dots are indicators of if a connection is active. If you’ve seen connections that have a hollowed-out green circle then they are currently not active.

When you’re going about your business on LinkedIn, you don’t always want people to know that you’re active. You could be making use of any of the platform’s many features and don’t want to be interrupted. Well, have you noticed not all of your connections have this green indicator? That is because they have changed their active status for who can see when they’re active.

So, how do you change your active status on LinkedIn?

• Click the ‘Me’ icon at the top of your LinkedIn feed
• Select ‘Settings & Privacy’ from the drop-down menu
• Select ‘Visbility’ from the list on the left
• Find the ‘Visibility of your LinkedIn activity’ section
• Click ‘Change’ next to ‘Manage active status’
• Here, you can choose from three options

Choosing ‘Your connections only’ means that your active status will only be visible to your 1st-degree connections. ‘All LinkedIn members’ means that everyone on LinkedIn can see when you are active. ‘No one is pretty self-explanatory but it means that no one on LinkedIn will be able to see when you’re active.

If this is the first time you are changing your active status on LinkedIn then you have only been visible to your connections. LinkedIn sets this as your preference by default. These indicators are a great way to manage your conversations. You will have an indication of whether or not your connection will be notified when you send them a message and how quickly they will respond.