How to add a custom crosshair to a windowed or borderless game on Windows

Step 1: check the game's own settings first

Before adding anything, open the game's Settings and look under Gameplay, HUD, Interface, Accessibility or Reticle. Many shooters let you change crosshair color, thickness, outline or opacity, or switch on a center dot. An in-game option is always the safest choice for online play.

Step 2: make the built-in crosshair easier to see

• Pick a color that doesn't occur in the game world: cyan, magenta or lime usually beat white and red.
• Add an outline (a dark edge around a bright color). It stays readable on both bright sky and dark ground.
• Raise opacity to 100% and thickness by one step.
• On a laptop, turn off Settings > System > Display > Change brightness based on content. That way the picture doesn't dim and wash out a thin crosshair.

Step 3: if the game has no option, use an overlay

A crosshair overlay is a separate, transparent, always-on-top window that draws a crosshair at the center of your monitor. The game never knows it's there. Three rules decide whether it works:

1. Use windowed or borderless-windowed mode. Exclusive fullscreen takes over the display, and normal overlay windows can't draw on top of it. That's the most common reason for "crosshair overlay not showing". In the game's display settings, choose Borderless (sometimes called Windowed Fullscreen).
2. The overlay must be click-through and never steal focus, or your mouse clicks land on the overlay instead of the game.
3. Check the game's rules. Anti-cheat systems and the rules of some online or competitive games may flag or ban screen overlays, including crosshair overlays. Read each game's policy first. In single-player and casual games this is rarely an issue. In ranked play, assume it might be.

Safer-overlay checklist

• It doesn't inject into the game, hook it or read game memory. A plain separate window is the least invasive approach.
• It makes no network connections and doesn't need an account or launcher running.
• It has hotkeys to hide it instantly, plus profiles so each game gets its own crosshair.

Doing it with Solace Crosshair

Disclosure: Solace Crosshair is our product. SolaceSoftware makes and sells it.

Solace Crosshair draws your own crosshair in a separate always-on-top window, centred on the monitor you choose. Here's what we checked in our Oct 10 trial on Windows 11, using a sample scene:

• Click-through and never steals focus. The overlay is a transparent, topmost tool window that never took focus in our test.
• Shapes and presets. Dot, Cross or Circle. Size, thickness, gap, colour, opacity and an outline (edge colour), plus one-click high-contrast presets: Neon Cyan, Lime, Magenta and Yellow. Changing them updated the live overlay at once.
• 10 profiles you can save, load, rename or delete, one per game.
• Global hotkeys (Alt+X show/hide, Alt+C / Alt+V switch profile, Alt+L settings, per the product page). They can be rebound, and the change persisted in our test.
• Zero network connections in our network monitor across two runs. No account and no update check.
• No injection, hooks or game-memory reads, per the product page.
• Optional display tweaks (gamma, contrast, brightness, saturation) can apply everywhere or only while a chosen game runs. They're off by default, and we didn't test them.

Limits, stated plainly: We haven't tested it inside a real game or on multiple monitors yet. Exclusive fullscreen can hide it, so use windowed or borderless. If you hide the crosshair and restart the app, it starts hidden; press Alt+X or use the tray icon to bring it back. Anti-cheat in some online games may flag overlays, so check each game's rules. You use it at your own risk, and the app shows the same warning on first start.

Before you buy: You need Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit. It's a self-contained ZIP of about 71 MB, with no .NET install and no administrator rights. It's unsigned, so on first launch click More info > Run anyway, then check the ZIP against the SHA-256 on the product page. Settings live in %AppData%\Solace Crosshair. To remove it, exit from the tray and delete the folder.

Price: $9.19 once, with 12 months of best-effort email support. No subscription.

Which route?

• The game has crosshair settings: use them, with an outline and a high-contrast color.
• No setting, and you play windowed or borderless: a click-through overlay with profiles.
• Ranked play with strict anti-cheat: stick to the in-game options.

Get Solace Crosshair, $9.19 once. Questions before you buy: solacesoftware@smilingface.cloud.