Hidden Games and Privacy: What Others Can See

PlayStation gives you several ways to control what other people see about your gaming activity. Two features in particular cause confusion: hiding games from your library and hiding games from other players. They sound similar but control very different things.

Hide from your library (personal organization)

This option removes a game from your on-console Game Library view. It is a housekeeping feature — useful for hiding demos, betas, or titles you no longer want cluttering the list. It does not affect what appears on your public PSN profile.

On PS5

1. Open your Game Library and go to the Your Collection tab.
2. Highlight the game, press the Options button, and select Hide.
3. To see hidden games temporarily, go to Filter and Sort and turn on Hidden Items.

On PS4

1. Go to Library → Purchased, highlight the game, and press OPTIONS.
2. Select Do Not Show Content Item in [Purchased].

Hide games from other players (profile privacy)

This is the setting that actually affects what tools like PS Playtime can see. When you hide a game from other players, your activity in that title is not displayed on your public profile — including playtime, trophies, and last-played date.

On PS5

1. Go to Settings → Users and Accounts → Privacy.
2. Select View and Customize Your Privacy Settings.
3. Go to Hide your games from other players and select the games to hide.

On PS4

1. Go to Settings → Account Management → Privacy Settings → Hidden games.
2. Select the games you want to hide from your public profile.

On PS4, hiding a game also removes it from your activities, profile, and trophy list for other players. However, people can still see what you are currently playing via "Now Playing" unless you set your online status to Appear Offline.

Gaming history visibility (the master switch)

Even if you have not hidden individual games, your entire gaming history can be blocked by a single privacy setting. Under Your Activity → Who can see your gaming history, setting this to No One or Friends Only prevents PS Playtime and similar tools from accessing your game list entirely.

This is the most common reason lookups fail on our site. See our full guide: How to make your PlayStation profile public.

Hiding a game does not delete the hours

Both hide options are display switches. Sony's activity log still has the sessions. Unhide a title, or set gaming history back to Anyone, and the hours and last-played date come back with it. There is no "erase this game from my history" button, which matters when a server shuts down. Warzone on PS4 and the PS4 version of Tower of Fantasy stop accepting new sessions in October 2026. Hiding those tiles cleans your public profile. It does not rewind the number, and it does not protect you if the account itself is closed later.

A lookup that returns most of your library but drops one embarrassing title is almost always this per-game hide, not a tracking outage. A lookup that returns nothing is the master switch. Check that one first.

Summary