There’s nothing worse than getting gunned down while you’re busy in GTA:O. Thanks to a variety of add-ons and DLC, you can do a whole bunch of busy work in Los Santos — including Import / Export, Special Cargo, Hangar jobs, and preparations for the new Doomsday Heist. There’s a ton of stuff to do, and lots of disruptive people ready to ruin your fun. If you’re exhausted by a full public server you’ve just created, you can use a simple trick to disconnect everyone else on PC.
It only takes a second to accomplish, but it can save you a ton of time. No more impromptu car chases or bounties. Just you and the open world of Los Santos, full of opportunity and extra side-quests to complete for big money rewards. Or you can complete a treasure hunt and grab a Red Dead Redemption 2 revolver. That’s pretty cool, too.
How to Make Public Servers Private | PC Trick
This trick is (mostly) only available to PC users, but we’ll go over a basic version for console players below. On console, it’s much more likely to get you kicked off online, but we’ll list it here anyone. For completion’s sake.
- On PC:
- Start up GTA:O and get online.
- Press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC to open the Task Manager.
- Go to the ‘Performance’ tab and left-click ‘Open Resource Monitor’ at the bottom.
- Go to the ‘Network’ tab and find ‘GTA5.exe’
- Right-click ‘GTA5.exe’ and select ‘Suspend Process’
- Wait 5-10 seconds, then right-click again and select ‘Resume Process’ –> Accept
- ALT+TAB back into GTA:O! Voila.
All the other players on your public server will time out. Eventually, they’ll be able to get back in — and you can just repeat the process once you’ve had enough. This is a very quick and simple way to kick everyone (that isn’t you) out.
On Console: You can just unplug the network cable to your router / wifi, wait 5-10 seconds, then plug in again. This is a much less reliable solution, and is bound to get you kicked offline too. Just a warning, but some players have successfully pulled it off with the network cable method.
