How to hide name in VALORANT: Step-by-step guide

Privacy matters in VALORANT. Ranked queues can feel stressful, and public games can attract the wrong kind of attention. Many players now look for simple ways to hide their names and keep their Riot ID away from strangers, but they don’t know how to. In this guide, we go over how to hide your name in VALORANT, turning off other players’ nametags, and more!

How to hide name in VALORANT

Riot treats name hiding as a privacy feature inside the game client. The steps are simple and the same idea applies on PC and console. Here is how to hide your VALORANT name:

Step-by-step on PC

1. Launch VALORANT and go to the home screen.
2. Click the gear icon in the top right or press ESC to open the menu.
3. Select Settings.
4. Make sure you are in the General tab at the top.
5. Scroll down until you reach the Privacy section.

You now see two key options from Riot’s official “Anonymizing Your Riot ID” guidelines:

• Hide your Riot ID from players outside your party
• Use generic names for players outside your party

Here is what each setting does in practice:

Hide your Riot ID from players outside your party

When you turn this on, players who are not in your party can no longer see your Riot ID. During Agent select they see a generic “Player 1–5” name. After the round starts, they see only your Agent name, for example “Yoru,” instead of your username. On your own screen you still see “Me” in the scoreboard and killfeed.

Use generic names for players outside your party

This option hides other players’ Riot IDs from you. The game replaces their names with their Agents. For example, instead of seeing “xXSniperXx,” you only see “Jett” or “Omen.” This setting works well if you stream or record videos and want to keep your teammates anonymous as well. For maximum privacy, turn on both settings. That way nobody outside your party sees your name and you do not see theirs either.

On PlayStation and Xbox

• On console, the menu structure is almost the same.
• Open VALORANT.
• Press the menu button and enter Settings.
• Go to the General tab and scroll down to Privacy.
• Toggle Hide my name from players outside my party and Use generic names for players outside my party as you prefer.

These options sync with your Riot account, so your privacy behavior stays consistent across platforms that support VALORANT.

What is the streamer mode in VALORANT?

Riot’s support pages group these privacy options under the broader idea of “Streamer Mode,” which exists across Riot games as a set of tools that protect your identity in and out of matches.

In VALORANT, streamer mode mainly relies on the two settings you saw above:

• You hide your Riot ID from players outside your party.
• You use generic names for everyone outside your party.

Together they create an anonymous lobby where nobody sees real Riot IDs on screen.

How do I turn off player nametags?

When people ask how to turn off player nametags in VALORANT, they usually mean the info boxes that float above teammates. These boxes show the gun, shield, and utility and they can clutter your screen.

Riot’s official UI Settings FAQ explains that this feature uses the Player Loadouts Always Visible option.

Follow these steps:

1. Open VALORANT and go to Settings.
2. Stay in the General tab.
3. Scroll to the Other section.
4. Find Player Loadouts Always Visible.
5. Set it to OFF to hide those loadout boxes above allies.

When you switch this off, your teammates still show their standard health bar and name, but the large loadout tag disappears. That gives you a cleaner view of the map and fights, especially in tight sites where UI elements overlap.

If your entire HUD disappears instead, you may have turned on the Hide User Interface In Game option in the same menu. Set Hide User Interface In Game to OFF to bring your HUD back.

At the moment, VALORANT does not offer a separate setting that removes all name indicators entirely while keeping the rest of the HUD. The privacy tools focus on replacing names with generic identifiers rather than removing them from the UI.

Extra privacy settings

After you hide your name, you can strengthen privacy with a few additional options.

One common recommendation from community guides is to combine name hiding with Auto Reject Friend Requests. This setting lives in the same general area of the client and stops new friend requests from random players after a heated match.

You can also change your Riot ID on the Riot account page if your current name already attracts attention. A new ID combined with anonymized settings helps you reset your in-game identity without creating a fresh account.

Featured Image Credit: Riot Games