In Valorant, half of aim is your hands, but the other half comes down to "how well you can see your crosshair." Even at the same skill level, if your crosshair blends into the screen or is so big it covers the enemy's head, your headshot rate drops noticeably. The good news is that Valorant lets you customize your crosshair in fine detail, and you can even import a favorite pro player's crosshair as-is with a single code. In this article we'll go in order from what each settings-menu item means to recommended default settings, applying and sharing pro crosshair codes, and choosing your color and dot.
The Crosshair Settings Menu: What Does Each Item Mean?
First, in-game, go to Settings (ESC or the gear icon) → Crosshair. At first glance it looks complicated with all the sliders, but the items that actually change your result the most are a fixed handful. Let's look at them one by one.
Color and Outline
Color sets the color of the crosshair itself. White is the default, but on bright maps or in situations with lots of smoke and ability effects, white easily blends into the background. That's why many people use colors that rarely appear in the game background, like cyan or yellow. The outline puts a black border around the crosshair so its shape stays visible against any background. You can also adjust the outline's thickness and opacity, but too thick gets cluttered, so a single thin line is a safe choice.
Center Dot
The center dot is a point placed at the exact center of your crosshair. It's off by default, but turning it on makes it clear exactly where you're looking with a single point. You can adjust the dot's size and opacity, and keeping it small lets it serve as a "dead-center reference point" along with your crosshair lines. Plenty of players use only the dot with no lines at all.
Thickness, Length, Gap, and Offset of the Inner and Outer Lines
The cross (+) shape is split into two groups, the Inner Lines and Outer Lines. For each you can separately set the thickness, length, and offset (the gap from the center). The thicker they are, the easier they are to see but the more they cover the enemy; the longer they are, the more of your view they take up. The offset sets how far the four lines spread out from the center; the wider they spread, the more the dead center empties out, making it easier to aim at small enemies but weakening your sense of "exactly where." Settings that turn the outer lines off and use only the inner lines are common too.
Movement on Firing (Error)
Turning on the "Movement Error" and "Firing Error" options makes the crosshair spread when you move or fire, visually showing your current bullet spread. It's useful as information, but many players turn both off because the crosshair constantly moving is distracting. With them off, the crosshair always shows at a fixed size.
Recommended Default Settings: Just Start With This
If you "don't know where to start," we recommend starting with one clean set of crosshair lines like below and then tweaking to taste. The key is "small and crisp, and visible anywhere."
- Color: a high-contrast color like cyan or yellow that stands out against the background
- Outline: on, thickness around a single thin line
- Center dot: on (small), or off depending on taste
- Inner lines: thickness 1-2, short length (4-6), small offset
- Outer lines: off (to keep your view clear)
- Movement on firing (Movement/Firing Error): off
This setup is a small crosshair with a center dot added, so it keeps the dead center clear without covering the enemy's head. Use it for a few days, and if you feel "I can't see the lines," bump the thickness; if it feels "too cluttered," trim the length or offset, fine-tuning it that way.
Apply a Pro Crosshair in One Step With a Code
One of Valorant's most convenient features is the "crosshair code." It's a share code that compresses your entire crosshair setup into a short string, and just copying it and importing it applies someone else's crosshair to your screen as-is. It's especially handy when you want to try out the exact crosshair a pro player or streamer uses.
How to Import and Export
At the top of the Settings → Crosshair menu (or in the profile area) there's an import code field and a copy code button. To apply one, paste your copied code into the import field and apply, and you're done. Conversely, if you want to share your crosshair, export it with "copy current crosshair code" and pass it to a friend. As long as you trade codes, there's no need to match every slider by hand.
For reference, this "share by code" method is a convenience feature unique to Valorant. Counter-Strike sets the crosshair with console commands, and in Apex Legends the reticle changes based on your weapon's attachments and optic, so it's a bit different from Valorant's feel of copying the whole thing with a single code.
Color and Dot: What's Best to Pick?
The right color is "the one you can see best," but statistically, high-saturation colors like cyan, yellow, and lime green are preferred over white. Those colors rarely appear in Valorant map backgrounds, so the crosshair doesn't blend in. Red and green can be hard to tell apart if you have color blindness, so pick based on your own eyes.
Dot vs. crosshair is another common dilemma. Using only a small center dot covers almost none of the screen, which is clean for long-range precision aim and lining up at head height. A crosshair, on the other hand, gives a clear dead-center feel and left-right reference, which is intuitive for close-range fights and beginners. There's no right answer, and a compromise that uses a dot plus a small crosshair together is the safest.
What Makes a Good Crosshair for Aim
To sum up, the conditions for an aim-friendly crosshair are simple. First, small and crisp enough not to cover the enemy's head. Second, visible at a glance against any background (high-contrast color plus outline). Third, steady so it doesn't shake when firing or moving, keeping your reference point consistent. Keep just these three and you don't need an elaborate setup. In the end, the crosshair that "catches your eye first on screen but doesn't actually cover the enemy" is a good one.
One more thing: changing your crosshair often makes your hands adapt to a new reference every time, which shakes your aim. Once you've found a setup you like, it's better for your score to save it as a code and keep it fixed for a while so your hands get used to it.
An Ace Landed With Your Good Crosshair? DOR Clips It for You
Dial in your crosshair and your headshots and aces tend to climb, yet those very best moments tend to come when you didn't have recording on. Install the free game recorder DOR and it automatically detects the moment you launch Valorant, records, and on its own cuts good moments like aces and clutches into short clips and saves them. You can keep that one shot you landed with your newly dialed-in crosshair without missing it.
