Static or dynamic
Set cl_crosshairstyle 4, Classic Static. Roughly ninety five percent of professional players use it, and the reason is simple: a dynamic crosshair expands when you move and when you fire, but that expansion is a rough animation, not an accurate picture of where the next bullet goes. It tells you something you already know, that you are moving, while making the centre of the screen busier at the exact moment you need it to be calm.
Styles 0 to 3 are the dynamic variants. Style 5 is Legacy, the CS 1.6 style crosshair that only expands while you shoot; a handful of long-time players still use it out of habit. If you have played with a dynamic crosshair for years, the switch to static feels wrong for about a week and then feels obviously better. See our static crosshair codes if you want a starting point.
Size
cl_crosshairsize sets the length of each bar. Pros almost all sit at 1 to 2. A short bar keeps your eye on the centre point instead of on the arms, and it covers less of a distant head. If you keep losing the crosshair in a fight, that is usually a colour or outline problem rather than a size problem, so fix those first before going bigger.
Size scales with screen height, not with your monitor size. At 1440p or 4K the same value is drawn with more pixels, so a 1440p player who wants the same physical size on screen can afford to go slightly larger in the number, while a player on a stretched 1024x768 resolution will see a chunkier crosshair from the same value. Change it once, look at it in a deathmatch server, then leave it alone. Small crosshair codes collect the shortest setups in use.
Gap
cl_crosshairgap is the setting people misread most often. It is not the distance from the centre, it is an offset from a base distance of 4 pixels. So a gap of -4 pulls the inner ends of the bars all the way to the centre and closes the hole completely, -3 leaves a single pixel of space, and 0 leaves the default 4 pixel gap.
Most pros use -3 or -4. A closed or nearly closed crosshair gives you one clear aim point instead of four bar ends to average between. The console accepts values down to -12.8, which is why you will see codes with a gap of -7; past -4 the bars simply overlap in the middle and the extra negative value stops changing anything visible. Positive gaps push the bars outward and are mostly useful with a centre dot, where the dot is the aim point and the bars are peripheral reference.
Thickness
cl_crosshairthickness works best at 0.5 or 1. The game rounds the drawn width to whole pixels, so the practical choice at 1080p is a one pixel bar or a two pixel bar and the values in between just round to one of those. That rounding has a side effect worth knowing: an odd pixel width cannot be centred perfectly, so the bar sits one pixel off centre on one side. It is invisible in a fight but it explains why a crosshair sometimes looks slightly lopsided in a screenshot.
Thickness 0.5 gives the thinnest, most precise crosshair. Thickness 1 is easier to see and is the more common choice among players who run without an outline.
Outline
cl_crosshair_drawoutline 1 draws a black border around every bar. It guarantees the crosshair stays readable on white walls, skyboxes and bright molotov flames, at the cost of making the whole thing look heavier and slightly less precise.
The usual trade is this: outline on with thickness 0.5, or outline off with thickness 1. Both give you roughly the same on-screen weight, but the outlined version survives bright backgrounds better while the plain version looks cleaner. If you play a lot of Ancient or Overpass with their pale surfaces, take the outline.
Colour, and why it changes per map
The job of the colour is to never match what is behind it. Green, the default, is a good choice precisely because almost nothing in CS2 maps is a saturated green. Our green crosshair codes cover most of the pro scene for that reason.
- Green works everywhere and is the right default if you do not want to think about it.
- Cyan is the best pick for grey and blue-grey maps such as Nuke and Ancient, where green can sink into foliage.
- Yellow stands out strongly on dark maps and dark corners, and is easy for most colour blind players to see.
- Red is the one to avoid. Blood, fire, red map textures and the damage indicator all compete with it.
- Custom colours need
cl_crosshaircolor 5plus the three RGB values. Bright pink and mint are popular because neither appears in the environment.
Switching colour per map is legitimate and easy with binds, but it costs you familiarity. Unless one map is genuinely giving you trouble, pick one colour and keep it.
Dot and T-style
cl_crosshairdot 1 adds a centre dot. Combined with a short bar and a small positive gap, it gives you a precise single aim point with light peripheral structure. A pure dot, bars set to length 0, is the most extreme version: nothing on screen except the point you are aiming at. It suits players with steady crosshair placement and punishes players who need the bars to find the centre quickly. Try it in deathmatch first, and browse dot crosshair codes to see how pros configure it.
cl_crosshair_t 1 removes the top bar, leaving a T shape. The idea is that nothing blocks the space just above the centre where a head appears when someone peeks over a box or up a ramp. It is a small gain and purely a matter of taste.
Alpha and blending
cl_crosshairalpha 255 with cl_crosshairusealpha 1 gives a fully solid crosshair, which is what you want in almost every case. Lower alpha values make the crosshair semi transparent and harder to read in a fight. Setting cl_crosshairusealpha 0 forces alpha to 200 and switches to additive blending, which makes the crosshair glow on dark backgrounds and wash out on bright ones. Very few players use it on purpose.
Follow recoil
cl_crosshair_recoil 1 makes the crosshair travel with your spray pattern. It is a good learning tool: turn it on in a workshop map, spray the AK pattern into a wall, and you can see the relationship between the pattern and your compensation directly. In matches most players turn it back off, because the moving crosshair removes the fixed reference point you use to place your next shot.
Resolution and aspect ratio
Crosshair size and thickness scale with screen height, so the same code looks slightly different at 1080p and at 1440p. Aspect ratio matters more for stretched resolutions: on 4:3 stretched, the horizontal axis is scaled up, which makes the horizontal bars look wider relative to the vertical ones. If you move between native and stretched, expect to nudge the size by half a point rather than rebuild the crosshair.
Recommended starting points
Three presets that cover most preferences. Copy the code, then import it in CS2 through Settings, Game, Crosshair, Share or Import. Every one of them is a starting point rather than an answer; open the generator and adjust from there.