Settings
The Settings window is reached from the main menu or the pause menu. Change what you want, then press Apply to try it or Save to keep it; Cancel throws your changes away.
Interface
- Embed the server browser, chat window and other tool windows inside the game, or untick to give each its own window (useful on a second monitor).
- Steam Cloud: sync your settings, and separately your custom classes, between computers.
- Who can join your party: open to friends, or invite only.
Audio
- Master volume and output device.
- Footsteps volume.
- Hit sound (with a separate headshot sound), hurt sound and heal sound, each with an on/off switch and its own volume. The heal sound plinks as the player you heal fills up and chimes when they are full.
Video
- Display: display mode (windowed, borderless windowed or exclusive fullscreen), field of view, viewmodel field of view, draw viewmodel, own shadow. Borderless windowed fills the screen as a window with no edges: tabbing in and out is instant, and other programs can appear on top of it. Exclusive fullscreen takes the whole screen for itself, keeps the game's tool windows (console, chat) inside it, and minimizes when you tab away; because it covers the screen exactly, it can feel a little more responsive than borderless. At your desktop resolution neither mode is slower than the other. Exclusive fullscreen can also run your screen at a different resolution, aspect ratio and refresh rate: a lower resolution looks blockier but can raise your frame rate on a slow graphics card, and the screen goes black for a moment when it switches and each time you tab out and back in. Press F11 at any time, in a match, a replay or the menus, to switch between windowed and borderless windowed (from exclusive fullscreen it goes to windowed); the choice is saved as your display mode.
- Photo mode: choose what the photo mode key hides (HUD, viewmodel, legs, own shadow).
- Environment effects: reflections, ambient occlusion, indirect lighting, global illumination and volumetric fog. These are permissions: unticking always turns an effect off, ticking only allows it where the map uses it.
- Quality: shadow softness, occlusion culling, texture compression.
- Anti-aliasing: MSAA 2x, 4x or 8x, plus an FXAA or TAA pass.
- Combat effects: impact particles, muzzle flash, particle detail, decal limit (bullet holes and scorch marks).
- Performance: V-Sync (off, on or adaptive), max FPS, threaded rendering and graphics API (Vulkan or Direct3D 12), the last two after a restart. To pick these for one launch without opening the game, see Launch options.
Crosshair
Pick a default, circle or cross crosshair, set its size, gap and color, and see it in a preview. You can also set the hit marker's duration and color, and turn damage numbers on or off, with how long they stay and whether they combine.
Controls
Mouse sensitivity, raw mouse input, and every key binding. Each action takes two bindings, and a search box finds an action or a key. The default keys are listed on Controls.
The bindings are grouped by tab:
- Movement, Combat and Weapons: moving, firing and switching weapons.
- Interface: loadout, team change, scoreboard, HUD, photo mode, screenshots, replay recording, Open Console, Open Chat, Chat: Next Channel and Toggle Borderless Window.
- Replay: the keys used while watching a replay: Spectate View, the free camera's Up, Down, Fast (hold) and Look (hold), Previous Player and Next Player, and Skip Kill Cam for the kill cam. The free camera moves with your Movement keys, so a custom layout works there too.
- Voice: push to talk.
Hints on screen name the keys you have bound and change as soon as you rebind: the chat box's "Press Enter to chat" prompt and the controls line in a replay.
Chat: Next Channel also works while you are typing in the chat box, which is how Tab switches channel there. Bound to a letter, that letter switches channel instead of typing. Esc always backs out of the chat box, a replay and the pause menu, and cannot be rebound.
Keys can also be bound to console commands with bind; see Developer console#Key binds.
A few settings have console variables too, such as viewmodel_fov and cl_drawviewmodel. See Developer console.
Voice
See Voice chat.
Mender
Hold to heal chooses whether the Mender needs the trigger held.