Your availability is listed under “Chat and Mobile Text” on the left side of the page, to the right of the words “I am”. If you’re signed out of Chat, you’ll see Offline next to a sleeping face. Click Offline (or whatever you see there next to “I am”) to open a pull-down menu where you can select a different availability.

The basic availability choices are:

1. Available—Your contacts see you as Online/Available for Chat.
2. Busy—This indicates you’re online, but don’t want to be disturbed.
3. Invisible—You look offline but you can still start a chat if you want.
4. Sign out of Chat—When you sign out, people see the same thing they see when you’re “Invisible”: your face-icon is gray and sleeping.

Or: Write your own availability message!

You can also write your own availability (status) message after either Available or Busy, to give your contacts more detail on what’s up with you. For example, you could select Busy and write “crunch time!”

Here’s how to do it:

1. Click your current availability. This opens a pull-down menu.
2. Click Custom Status Message.
3. After “Appear as”, select Available or Busy.
4. In the box after “Your Message”, add the text you want.
Click Save. Done!

Yahoo! Mail will keep the five most recent custom status messages you compose, so that you can select them easily and quickly from the pull-down menu later.

Note: Anytime you’re signed out of Yahoo! Mail, you are also signed out of chat.

Also, your chat availability remains the same in Yahoo! Mail until you make a change to it. So if you choose Available, you’ll continue to be shown as Available to others the next time you sign in.

Yahoo! Messenger desktop application users: If we detect that you’re already signed into Yahoo! Messenger, we'll just quietly not sign you into chat— we don't want to interrupt what you’re already doing. Of course, you can always change your status from the menu. Signing into Chat in Yahoo! Mail will sign you out of Yahoo! Messenger.