The crosshair is the one setting in CS2 you look at for every second of every round, and the settings pages for it are among the least explained on the internet. Most generators hand you eleven sliders and no sentence about what any of them changes. Most lists of “default values” disagree with each other, because they were copied from CS:GO-era pages rather than read from the game.
This is the crosshair explained command by command, with the game's own default for each one — read from the build of CS2 current on 15 September 2026, not from another guide — and a plain description of what moves on screen when you change it.
Where the Crosshair Settings Live
In the game: Settings → Game → Crosshair. The preview at the top of that page is live, every change applies immediately, and nothing needs a restart. Each control on that page is a console variable, and the console is the other place to set them — which matters because a crosshair written as commands can be saved in an autoexec, pasted from a friend, or shared as text.
None of these commands requires sv_cheats. They are personal settings, they work in every mode including Premier and on third-party servers, and they save with your account.
The Real Defaults, and What the Guides Say Instead
Valve publishes the game's binaries; SteamDB's GameTracking project dumps every console variable from each build, with its default. We read the dump for build 2000908, the current one on the day of writing. These are the defaults CS2 ships with:
cl_crosshairstyle— 2cl_crosshairsize— 3.9cl_crosshairthickness— 0.6cl_crosshairgap— −2.2cl_crosshairdot— 0cl_crosshair_drawoutline— 1, withcl_crosshair_outlinethickness1cl_crosshaircolor— 5 (custom), with R 0, G 255, B 0 — the default is a custom colour that happens to be greencl_crosshairusealpha— 1, withcl_crosshairalpha200cl_crosshair_t— 0cl_fixedcrosshairgap— 3, andcl_crosshairgap_useweaponvalue1
Now the part worth an article. At the time of writing, the two biggest crosshair databases give the default size as 2.5 and as 5 — the game says 3.9. They give the thickness as 0.5 and as 1 — the game says 0.6. They give the gap as 0 and as 1 — the game says −2.2. Not one of the three contested numbers matches either site. Those pages were written for CS:GO, where the defaults were round numbers, and nobody went back to check. If a guide tells you to “reset to default” with a value from that list, you are not resetting to anything the game ever shipped.
What Each Command Actually Changes
cl_crosshairsize is the length of each of the four arms, measured from the gap outwards. Zero removes the arms entirely, which with cl_crosshairdot 1 leaves you a dot.
cl_crosshairthickness is how wide each arm is drawn. Very thin arms are drawn at the mercy of your resolution, and the outline is what keeps a thin crosshair visible at all.
cl_crosshairgapis the distance between the centre and the inner end of each arm. It goes negative: the game's own default is −2.2, and ten of the thirteen pros on our list sit between −3 and −4.5, which pulls the arms in until they nearly touch. Positive values open a hole in the middle. With cl_crosshairgap_useweaponvalue 1, the default, the gap also changes per weapon; set it to 0 for the same gap on everything.
cl_crosshairdot adds a pixel at the exact centre. cl_crosshair_tremoves the top arm, so nothing sits above the point you are aiming at — useful for headshots at range, disliked by people who find the asymmetry distracting.
cl_crosshair_drawoutline and cl_crosshair_outlinethicknessdraw a dark border around the arms, 0 to 3 pixels. This is the setting that decides whether a green crosshair vanishes against Mirage's bright walls.
cl_crosshaircolor picks a preset: 0 red, 1 green, 2 yellow, 3 blue, 4 cyan, and 5 for a custom colour from cl_crosshaircolor_r, _g and _b. cl_crosshairusealpha turns transparency on and cl_crosshairalpha sets it, 0 to 255; the game ships at 200, slightly see-through.
cl_crosshair_recoil, on by default, is the switch behind the crosshair following your recoil while you spray — the dump gives it no description, so that is the community's reading of it, not Valve's. Either way it does not change where the bullets go, only whether the crosshair shows you.
Crosshair Styles: Three of the Six Numbers Are Dead
cl_crosshairstyle takes a number from 0 to 5, and every generator lists all of them as if they worked. Ask the game itself — the variable's own help text in the build dump — and this is what it says, word for word:
“0 = DEFAULT (DISABLED), 1 = DEFAULT STATIC (DISABLED), 2 = DEFAULT (accurate recoil/spread feedback with a fixed inner part), 3 = ACCURATE DYNAMIC (DISABLED) (accurate recoil/spread feedback), 4 = DEFAULT STATIC, 5 = LEGACY (fake recoil - inaccurate feedback)”
So CS2 draws three styles. 2 is the default: a crosshair that expands to show your real spread and recoil, around a fixed inner part. 4 is the static one: it never moves, whatever you do, and it is what every one of the thirteen pro players on our list runs. 5is the legacy CS:GO behaviour, which the game itself labels “fake recoil, inaccurate feedback” — it moves, but not in a way that corresponds to where the bullets land. Styles 0, 1 and 3 are marked disabled; setting them does not give you a fourth or fifth option.
That is worth knowing before you copy a settings list from 2019, and it is why our generator offers the three styles the game still draws, with the game's own wording beside each.
What a Crosshair Code Is, and What It Is Not
A code looks like CSGO-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx: the CSGO prefix, then five groups of five characters. CS2 kept the CS:GO format, which is why the prefix still says CSGO. To use one, go to the same Crosshair settings page, click Share or Import next to the preview, paste, and import. The same dialog copies your own crosshair out as a code.
The code encodes about twenty variables: everything in the list above plus the four cl_crosshair_dynamic_* values that control how far a dynamic crosshair opens. From the list of fields, two things it does not carry: cl_crosshair_sniper_width, the thickness of the scope's hairline, and cl_crosshair_friendly_warning. Importing a pro's code gives you their crosshair, not their scope.
Our generator writes console commands, not a code. That is deliberate: the encoding of the code has been verified, but the exact order of fields inside it has not been confirmed against a known pair, and a decoder that silently swaps gap and thickness is worse than no decoder. Commands are text you can read, check against this article, and paste into the console or an autoexec — and they are the real contract underneath every code anyway.
Does the Crosshair Change Where Bullets Go?
No. The crosshair is drawn over the game; the game does not read it. Bullets go where the weapon's spread and recoil send them, and a dynamic crosshair visualises that inaccuracy rather than causing it. A static crosshair hides it. Neither changes it.
What a crosshair does change is you: how fast your eye finds centre, whether the arms cover a head at long range, whether the colour disappears on a particular map. Those are real, they are personal, and they are the reason a pro's crosshair is a starting point rather than an answer.
Build Yours and Copy the Commands
The CS2 Crosshair Generator shows the crosshair on four backgrounds at once while you move the sliders, so you can see whether the gap you typed is the gap you wanted, and it prints the console commands underneath — eleven lines, fourteen with a custom colour, in the order the game writes its own config. Start from one of five shapes or from one of the thirteen pros, then change what you need.
One honest note on the preview: CS2 draws the crosshair in its engine, at your resolution, with rounding nobody outside Valve has the code for. Every generator's preview is an approximation, ours included. The commands are exact, and they are what you paste.
