I am building a character and would like to turn on/off certain handles based on visibility options in my asset.

When I dive into the Type Properties > Handles I see a field called “onoff” but it does not hide them, simply disables them and displays them as dashed lines.

Any idea? I don't want to see them at all.

thanks in advance

i cant find any solution for this.
But you can temporary connect\disconnect handles via hscript.
http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini13.0/commands/ombind [sidefx.com] - connect
http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini13.0/commands/omunbind [sidefx.com] - disconnect

Add FlagChanged event to your node in OnCreate script
In event callback you can check if displayFlag is ON or OFF and respectively bind\unbind manipulator manually

Hope this helps.