Fadenkreuz (German for crosshairs) is a simple and lightweight free open-source crosshairs application for Windows.
It was developed for using it with Fortnite, but it should also work with other Windows games using DirectX 12 fullscreen or windowed mode.
Warning: Depending on the games you play, using a third-party crosshairs app like Fadenkreuz drawing an overlay (layered window) above other application windows may be considered as cheating and get you banned.
Fadenkreuz currently supports the following crosshairs shapes, whose size and color can be simply changed using hotkeys.
For installing Fadenkreuz, you only need to copy a provided release version of Fadenkreuz.exe to your Windows system. That's it.
If you want to build Fadenkreuz from source code, you can do this, for example, by using the software distribution and building platform MSYS2, and the provided batch file makeit.bat. You may have to change paths to the used build tools gcc.exe and windres.exe within makeit.bat depending or your Minimal GNU for Windows (MinGW) software installation.
The default makeit.bat is as follows:
REM Simple build batch file for Fadenkreuz
REM Paths to installed MinGW tools (e.g. MSYS2, https://www.msys2.org/)
set GCC="C:\msys64\ucrt64\bin\gcc.exe"
set WINDRES="C:\msys64\ucrt64\bin\windres.exe"
%WINDRES% -i fadenkreuz.rc -O coff fadenkreuz.res
%GCC% -fdiagnostics-color=always -municode -s -O3 fadenkreuz.cpp fadenkreuz.res -mwindows -lstdc++ -lgdi32 -lgdiplus -luser32 -o Fadenkreuz.exe
Start Fadenkreuz.exe on your Windows system.
You can control Fadenkreuz using the following hotkeys.
| Hotkey | Functionality |
|---|---|
| <F1> | Toggle crosshairs visibility |
| <F2> | Increase X-offset |
| <CTRL> + <F2> | Decrease X-offset |
| <F3> | Increase Y-offset |
| <CTRL> + <F3> | Decrease Y-offset |
| <F4> | Center crosshairs (reset offsets) |
| <F5> | Select next shape |
| <CTRL> + <F5> | Select previous shape |
| <F6> | Select next color |
| <CTRL> + <F6> | Select previous color |
| <F7> | Increase crosshairs size |
| <CTRL> + <F7> | Decrease crosshairs size |
| <F8> | Increase crosshairs thickness |
| <CTRL> + <F8> | Decrease crosshairs thickness |
| <F9> | Exit Fadenkreuz app |
| <F10> | Load settings from Windows registry |
| <F11> | Save current settings to Windows registry |
Fadenkreuz uses a layered window created with the flag WS_EX_LAYERED for showing the crosshairs, and updates its content using the Windows API method UpdateLayeredWindow. This layered window is periodically updated to the top window using the Windows API method SetWindowPos.
The crosshairs are drawn using GDI+ functionality provided by Windows.
Application settings are stored in the Windows registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Fadenkreuz.
Use at your own risk.