How to know if someone is invisible on Gmail

As you might be knowing from quite some time you can go invisible while chatting on Gmail. The invisible status is available in Gmail Chat, Google Talk.

What to do if you want to know if someone in really offline or is playing Mr. Hideous.

Follow these steps:

Step 1:

Open the chat window for the contact you want to confirm is offline of invisible

Step 2:

If you see a message "The chat is off record" then proceed to step 3, else click on options in the chat window (Gmail) or the down pointing arrow (Gtalk) and choose "Go Off Record" You will now surely see that "The chat is off record"

Step 3:

Now you need to interpret what you get.

• If you get a message in red like below, this indicates that the user is really offline.

shows the contact is offline

• If you get nothing then the user is invisible, or any status updates in gray it means the user is online but invisible.

shows the contact is invisible