Fortnite Guide: How to Hide Sprites on Your Back
Hunting down rare companions is the main draw of the new season, but watching a floating creature completely smother your favorite back bling is an aesthetic nightmare.
The launch of the Runners update gave us a massive batch of sandbox changes to process. While you are busy scouring the map for rare drops to finish your collection, you will quickly notice a glaring visual issue. Equipping a companion to your character model completely replaces whatever back bling you have sitting in your locker. Epic tucked away a specific toggle inside the preference menus to fix this, though they made sure it takes some digging to find.
Fixing Your Cosmetic Settings
Before you start dropping your companions into your standard inventory just to clear up your view, stop. Moving a companion to your regular carrying slots completely deactivates its unique gameplay abilities and forces it to stop gaining match experience points.
Instead of ruining your loadout efficiency, you need to navigate straight into the game client options to force a purely cosmetic override. Open up the main menu from the pre-game lobby by clicking your profile picture in the top right corner. Click the gear icon to open up the Settings menu, and then slide over to the Game tab.
Once you are in the Game options, scroll all the way down to the very bottom of the directory until you reach the dedicated Sprites section. Toggle the Hide Sprites On My Back option to On.
Saving this change forces the game client to instantly vanish your equipped companion model and restore your chosen back bling. This adjustment applies to your current match and all future drops. The underlying mechanics remain completely untouched, so your companion will continue to operate as normal and provide its standard gameplay perks while staying invisible on your screen.
The Line of Sight Catch
Before you assume you are completely stealthy, you need to understand how this system handles line of sight for the rest of the lobby.
Toggling this setting only hides the companion model on your personal screen. It does not hide it from anyone else. Every single squadmate in your party and every enemy pushing your box will still see exactly what creature is floating on your back, both in the pre-game lobby and during the live match.
As of right now, there is absolutely no option in the client to hide your companion model from opposing squads. The only literal way to prevent an enemy from identifying your equipped companion is to manually move it out of your back slot and into your main item inventory.
If you decide to use that inventory trick to hide your build, make sure you only execute the swap after you successfully jump out of the battle bus. If you clear the slot while you are still sitting inside the bus, the server will register it as a drop and you will lose your companion entirely before you even touch the grass.
