Can My Company See If I’m Faking My Slack Status?

If you’ve ever typed something like:

• “can my manager see if I’m faking Slack”
• “can my company tell if I’m using a mouse jiggler”
• “will IT know if I keep my Slack green artificially”

…you’re far from alone.

In a lot of remote and hybrid teams, that little green dot feels uncomfortably close to a performance metric. So it’s natural to wonder:

“If I use something to keep Slack active, can my company see it — and can I get in trouble?”

The honest answer is nuanced:

• Slack and your company can see some things about your account, device, and tools.
• They can’t usually see everything, especially the exact tool you’re using.
• The biggest risks often come from what you install and how far you bend policy, not from presence itself.

Let’s break down what’s typically visible, what usually isn’t, and how to think about “fake presence” in a way that’s calmer, more honest, and safer — especially if you use tools like Idle Pilot.

First: How Slack Presence Actually Works

Slack doesn’t have a magical “fake presence detector.” It just tracks a few basic things:

• Whether your account looks active or away
• Which devices or sessions are connected (desktop, mobile, web)
• Your status text and emoji if you set one manually

Presence is influenced by:

• Activity in the Slack app or browser tab
• Whether your device is awake or asleep
• Manual status changes and Do Not Disturb

From Slack’s perspective, your account either looks active enough to stay green or it doesn’t. It doesn’t inherently know whether that activity comes from:

• You typing
• A hardware mouse jiggler
• A cloud worker pinging your account

That distinction matters a lot to you — but the raw presence pipeline doesn’t include “intent.”

What Your Company Can Usually See

Every company is different, and some go far beyond the basics. But in many organizations, managers and IT can see at least three categories of information.

1. Presence and activity patterns inside Slack

Through Slack’s UI and admin tools, they may see:

• Whether you appear active or away during the day
• Rough patterns over time (e.g., “always green 9–5” or “often away mid-afternoon”)
• When you were last active in Slack

On their own, these signals don’t prove anything. But they can influence perceptions — which is why people quietly look for ways to stay green.

2. Apps and integrations installed in the workspace

Workspace owners and admins can view:

• Which Slack apps and bots are installed
• Who installed them
• Which scopes and permissions they requested

If you add a big presence-related bot into the workspace, that’s usually very visible. If you’re privacy-conscious, that’s one reason to favor account-level tools over workspace-wide ones.

3. Device and network activity on corporate hardware

On company-managed devices, IT may also see:

• Which processes are running (via endpoint security tools)
• What kinds of network connections those processes make
• Whether unusual input patterns are happening (e.g., constant mouse movement)

They’re rarely watching you personally in real time. But if a security scan or incident investigation turns up odd tools or scripts, you may find yourself explaining more than just your Slack status.

For a deeper look at how security tools view common hacks, see the breakdown in Not all “stay online” tools are safe.

What They Usually Can’t See (Directly)

There are also real limits to what your employer can normally see — especially from Slack’s side.

1. The exact method you use to stay active

Slack doesn’t label your presence as:

• “Genuinely typing” vs. “mouse jiggler active”
• “Reading channels” vs. “cloud worker pinging presence”

To Slack, a session is a session. If something keeps your account active within normal patterns, it’s just more activity — not a neon sign that you’re “faking it.”

2. Most personal browser extensions and local utilities (from Slack’s perspective)

Slack doesn’t receive a live inventory of:

• Which browser extensions you have installed
• Whether a local script is nudging your mouse

Those are visible, if at all, to your device monitoring tools, not to Slack itself.

3. Your intentions and context

Most importantly, your company can’t see:

• Whether you’re doing deep work away from Slack
• Whether constant “green” is realistic for your role
• How anxious you feel about being misunderstood

That context is where the real ethical questions live — and where honest communication plus better tools can go a long way.

For a thoughtful look at the ethics side, see Is it ever OK to fake your Slack status?.

Why Sketchy Tools Are the Real Red Flag

When people ask “Can my company see if I’m faking my Slack status?”, the deeper fear is usually:

“Will I get caught using something I shouldn’t be using?”

Common approaches include:

• Mouse jigglers and USB gadgets
• Homegrown scripts or copy-paste code from random repos
• Browser extensions that simulate activity

These carry bigger risks than presence alone because they:

• Live on your corporate laptop
• May request sweeping permissions (especially extensions)
• Can look suspicious in security logs

If you’re privacy-conscious, read the permissions-oriented guide Privacy matters: how to keep Slack active without giving apps access to everything before you click “Allow” on anything.

A Calmer Approach: Minimal, Cloud-Based Presence Helpers

If you’ve:

• Talked to your manager about expectations, and
• Still feel stuck in a presence-obsessed culture

…there’s a middle ground between “do nothing” and “run sketchy software.”

Instead of hacking your laptop, you can use a minimal, cloud-based service like Idle Pilot that:

• Connects directly to your Slack account, not the entire workspace
• Lets you set a schedule that matches your real working hours
• Runs a cloud worker that keeps your presence active during that schedule
• Requires no desktop app and no browser extension

From Slack’s perspective, this looks a lot like you being logged in from another device. From IT’s perspective, it’s far easier to explain than a mystery script that injects into your browser.

If you want to see how this compares to hardware tricks in detail, the guide to cloud-based alternatives to mouse jigglers covers that.

How to Stay on the Safe Side

No tool is risk-free, but you can dramatically reduce your odds of trouble by following a few principles.

1. Respect written policies

Before you add anything, skim:

• Acceptable use policies
• Security guidelines
• Rules about unapproved software and third-party apps

If something explicitly says “no unapproved software on corporate devices,” that’s a good reason to avoid scripts and local apps altogether and to favor cloud-only helpers instead.

2. Match your schedule to reality

Whatever you use, keep it grounded:

• Set presence schedules that align with when you’re actually working.
• Don’t silently stay green during vacations or full days off.
• Use Slack status to clarify when you’re heads-down or slower to respond.

3. Prefer tools with narrow, understandable scope

Safer patterns usually look like:

• Account-level access, not workspace-wide bots
• Minimal permissions (just what’s needed for presence)
• No reading of messages, files, or channel history

Tools like Idle Pilot are intentionally narrow for this reason — they’re built to be easier to explain and easier to trust than a pile of random scripts.

For a more tactical playbook on doing all this carefully, see Can you keep Slack green without getting in trouble?.

So… Can They Tell If You’re “Faking It”?

In most environments:

• Your company can see that you’re active, and roughly when.
• They may see tools and behavior on corporate devices if they look.
• They typically can’t see a big red label that says “this presence is fake.”

Where people get into trouble is less “your dot stayed green” and more:

• Violating clear security or software policies
• Installing unapproved tools that raise red flags
• Letting presence hide deeper issues with communication or performance

If you’re thoughtful about policies, honest about your schedule, and choose minimal tools like Idle Pilot over risky hacks, you dramatically lower the odds that your approach to Slack presence becomes a problem.

In other words: you can stop refreshing the member list to see who’s watching your dot — and start focusing on building a setup that works for both you and your employer.