Tracking the online/offline status of users and devices is called ‘presence.’ It’s a powerful tool for building chat rooms, multiplayer gaming, machine-to-machine communication, and sensor networks to name a few.

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to implement presence user detection functionality into your application in 6 easy steps.

1. Install PubNub API
2. Input publish/subscribe keys
3. Subscribe with presence events
4. Unsubscribe
5. Detect users in the channel

And huzzah! You’re off and running with a simple presence application!

In the video below, Stephen and Tomomi walks you through the process step-by-step. If you want to follow along, check out our Presence Quick Start Tutorial for the code from the video, and use your favorite text editor and the JavaScript console.

Building Real-time Device and User Detection with Presence from PubNub on Vimeo.

We have a number of other quick start tutorials around our core features including:

• Pub/Sub Messaging: Basic publish-subscribe messaging for web, mobile, and IoT apps
• Storage & Playback: Store real-time message streams for future retrieval and playback
• Access Manager: Control access permissions to streams of data by person, device, or channel

Additional Presence User/Device Detection Resources

• 5 Ways to Use the Presence API
• JavaScript Presence Detection
• PHP Presence Detection
• Internet of Things Presence Detection for Smart Devices