HUD & On-Screen Elements Glossary

By Treesz · Updated Oct 12, 2026

The HUD (heads-up display) is everything a game draws on top of the world to give you information: health and ammunition, a map in the corner, messages about who just died, a bar over a boss's head. A good HUD tells you what you need at the moment you need it. A bad one hides the game behind numbers or leaves you guessing.

This glossary covers ten elements you meet in almost every genre, plus one related article. For each one it explains what the element shows, how different games use it and what to adjust when it gets in your way. The table first gives the quick version; the entries follow.

Element	What it tells you	Typical place	Common setting to look for
Boss health bar	How close a big enemy is to dying, and often its phase	Top or bottom centre	Show or hide, size
Damage indicator	That you hit something, or were hit, and from where	Around the crosshair and screen edges	Style, colour, opacity
Item highlight	Which objects can be picked up and how rare they are	On the item in the world	Outline, rarity colours, filters
Kill feed	Who just eliminated whom	A screen corner	Duration, size, off
Minimap icon	Where you, allies, enemies and objectives are	A screen corner	Zoom, rotation, icon filters
Sound cue	Events you hear but cannot see	Audio	Mix, spatial sound, visual sound
Timer bar	How long until something ends, finishes or is ready	Under a unit or on the action bar	Show cooldown text
Toast pop-up	Short notices such as achievements or quest updates	Edge or corner	Duration, which events notify
Tooltip	What an item, ability or icon does	Next to the pointer	Delay, comparison, detail
Tracker	Progress towards goals or your stats	Side of the screen, or a website	Which items are tracked

Boss health bar

A boss health bar is a bar, usually at the top or bottom centre of the screen, showing how much life a major enemy has left. Many games name the boss above it, and some split the bar into segments for the phases of the fight.

Why it matters:

It tells you when the fight changes. In many MMO and action games, a boss changes its attacks at set health thresholds. Raid bosses in World of Warcraft, for example, are often documented by phase and health percentage, and the default boss frame lets a raid watch the percentage drop. Knowing that a boss changes behaviour at 50% lets you save a cooldown or a potion.
It paces the fight for you. A bar that moves slowly in the first minute shows you whether your damage is enough; a bar that hardly moves shows you something is wrong with your approach.
It is also a design choice. Some games leave the bar out on purpose. Shadow of the Colossus gives its giant enemies no health bar, so you judge progress from the creature's behaviour and from how much of its body you have climbed. Other games show only the name, or reveal a bar after the first hit.

Look in the interface options for toggles such as "show boss health" and for larger text or percentage readouts.

Damage indicator

A damage indicator is any on-screen or audio signal that tells you damage has just happened: that your attack connected, how much it did, or that you are being hit and from which direction. Most shooters, MMOs and action RPGs use several kinds at once, and reading them quickly is one of the easiest ways to make better decisions in a fight.

Damage indicators come in two families:

Outgoing indicators confirm your own hits: a hit marker on the crosshair, floating damage numbers above the target, an enemy health bar that shrinks, or a distinct impact sound.
Incoming indicators warn you about damage you take: an arrow or red arc pointing toward the attacker, a screen edge that turns red as your health drops, controller vibration and pain sounds.

The value of an indicator is in the extra information it carries. Colour often tells you what you hit, such as a shield, bare health or a weak point. Direction tells you where a threat is. Size, colour or a special icon can mark a critical hit or a headshot. Sound lets you confirm hits without taking your eyes off the target.

Examples from real games:

Hit markers. The small X that flashes around the crosshair when a bullet lands was popularised by Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and is now standard in most first-person shooters. There is a separate entry on the hit marker.
Directional damage. Call of Duty 4 also showed a red arrow pointing toward whoever hit you and tinted the screen red after repeated hits, a signal to get into cover. Nearly every modern shooter uses a version of this.
Shield-coloured numbers. In Apex Legends, the colour of a damage number tells you what you hit: shots on a shield take that shield tier's colour, hits on bare health look different, and headshots get their own highlight. The settings also let you show numbers as stacking, floating or both, and draw the incoming damage arrow in 3D, 2D or both.
Floating combat text. World of Warcraft shows damage and healing numbers above targets, and a separate Scrolling Combat Text option displays damage and healing you receive around your own character. Addons were long the usual way to restyle this, but the Midnight expansion (patch 12.0) restricted the combat data addons can read, so many of them stopped working and only some were rebuilt.
Visual sound cues. Fortnite's Visualize Sound Effects option, found in the Audio settings, draws a radial indicator for sounds such as footsteps, gunfire and chests. It turns audio information into something you can see, which helps players who are hard of hearing or play without headphones.

Tips:

Learn your game's colour code. In shield-based shooters, the moment the numbers change to the health colour is usually the moment to push, because the target is now taking full damage.
React to the direction, not the flash. When a directional marker appears, turn toward it and move to cover in the same motion instead of looking around randomly.
Customise the HUD. Many games let you change hit marker colour and opacity, damage number style, or switch them off. Battlefield REDSEC, for example, lets you set separate hit indicator colours for body hits, headshots and kills.
Use colourblind modes if you need them. Apex Legends offers modes for protanopia, deuteranopia and tritanopia, which also affect how damage colours are shown.
Do not chase big numbers. A large hit on a fresh, fully shielded target can matter less than a small hit that finishes a weakened one. Track who is low, not who you hit hardest.
Remember that the red directional marker points to where the damage came from at the moment you were hit. The attacker may have moved since, so treat it as a starting point for your search, not a live tracker.

Item highlight

Item highlighting makes objects stand out so you notice that you can pick them up or use them. Games do it in several ways:

Outlines and glows around loot and interactable objects, sometimes only when you aim at them.
Rarity colours. Apex Legends colours loot by tier (white, blue, purple, gold and red for the rarest), and World of Warcraft uses grey, white, green, blue, purple and orange for item quality.
Beams of light and sounds for valuable drops, common in loot-focused action RPGs.
Special vision modes. The Witcher 3's Witcher senses and the Detective mode in the Batman Arkham games highlight clues and objects that are otherwise hard to spot.
Labels with names, shown when you hold a key (the Alt key in many isometric RPGs) so the screen stays clear otherwise.

For games where items drop by the dozen, highlighting alone is not enough, so players use loot filters. Path of Exile is the best-known case: a filter script decides which drops get a large label, a colour or a sound and which are hidden completely, and community-made filters are widely shared. Last Epoch also ships built-in item filters.

Two practical points. First, colour alone excludes colour-blind players, so check whether the game adds icons or lets you change the palette. Second, a highlight can be a trap in competitive games: in a battle royale, a bright loot glow that shows from a distance can tell an enemy where a fight is going on.

Kill feed

The kill feed is a short scrolling list, normally in a screen corner, that announces eliminations as they happen: who killed whom and with what. It shows up in nearly every team shooter and MOBA, and in many battle royales it also lists knocks and revives.

Beyond the names, a kill feed carries information:

How the kill happened. Counter-Strike's feed has icons for headshots and wallbangs, and in 2020 CS:GO added icons for kills through smoke, no-scope kills and kills made while blinded.
Where the action is. A run of kills from one side of the map tells you which area is busy, even if you cannot see it.
Who is on form. A name that keeps appearing in the feed is a threat worth respecting.
How much is left. In games with limited players per team, counting the feed tells you who is still alive.

Settings differ widely. Most games let you resize or fade the feed, and competitive modes often show only your own team's activity or only a few lines. Streamers and spectators often hide parts of it. If the feed pulls your eyes away from the crosshair in busy fights, shorten how long entries stay on screen.

Minimap icon

The minimap is a small map, usually in a corner, that shows your surroundings in real time. Minimap icons are the markers on it: your own arrow or dot, allies, enemies that are currently visible, objectives, vendors, quest givers, resources and points of interest.

How games differ:

Shooters (Counter-Strike, Valorant and similar) show enemies on the radar only when a teammate sees them, so reading the minimap is a way of using your team's eyes.
MOBAs such as League of Legends use the minimap as a main tool: it shows only what your team can see, you can click it to move the camera and ping it to call out danger, and professionals look at it every few seconds.
Open-world games, such as the Grand Theft Auto series, use a radar with coloured blips for missions, shops and police.
MMOs show quest areas and resource nodes, often with filters so a crowded map stays readable. See resource nodes for how gathering points work.

Settings to look for are map rotation (north always up, or the map turning with you), zoom, icon size and opacity, and filters that hide categories of icons. Rotating maps feel natural when driving or running; fixed ones are easier to compare with the full-screen map. In any team game, call out what you see on the minimap rather than assuming everyone has checked it.

Sound cue

A sound cue is a sound that carries gameplay information: footsteps, reloading, a distinctive ability sound, a warning beep, a "ding" for a successful hit. In many games the sound arrives before the picture does, and with good headphones it is the fastest source of information you have.

Common categories:

Positional sounds, like footsteps, doors and gunfire, which tell you distance and direction.
Warnings, such as an incoming-grenade tone or a low-health heartbeat.
Action confirmations, like hit sounds or an ability becoming ready.
Announcer and voice lines. Many team games announce important events. In Overwatch, heroes call out their ultimate abilities with a voice line, which tells the enemy team what is coming.

How to get more from them:

Use headphones rather than speakers. Stereo is enough for left-right, and spatial-sound options in Windows and consoles can help with above-and-below.
Lower music and effects, so footsteps and warnings are not masked by explosions.
Learn the key sounds of your game. Experienced players recognise each weapon and ability by ear.
Turn on visual sound options when you cannot hear well. Fortnite's Visualize Sound Effects (see damage indicator) shows footsteps and other sounds on screen.

In competitive games, sound is also a risk: moving silently, or using abilities that cover your footsteps, is a standard way to avoid being found.

Timer bar

A timer bar shows time visually, as a bar or ring that fills or empties. It is the same idea in different roles:

Cast bars. The bar under a character's name or on the screen that shows how long a spell or action takes to finish. In MMOs, interrupting an enemy cast bar at the right time is a core skill.
Cooldowns. The sweep or number on an ability icon that shows when it can be used again; see skill cooldown.
Buff and debuff durations. A small bar or number under a status icon showing how long the effect lasts.
Objective timers. The progress bar of a capture point, or the countdown on a bomb. In Counter-Strike 2 the bomb explodes 40 seconds after being planted; in Valorant the spike takes 45 seconds.
Production and crafting timers in strategy and survival games.

Good habits: look at the bar's direction (does it fill up or drain?), turn on numbers for cooldowns if the game offers them, and tell your team when a timed ability will be ready.

A toast is a small message that slides into a corner of the screen, stays a few seconds and disappears without needing a click. The name comes from software design, where such messages "pop up" like toast from a toaster; Android's own interface code calls them toasts. In games they mean things like "Achievement unlocked", "Quest updated", "Friend is online", "New item added" or "Autosave in progress".

Toasts became familiar with achievement systems: Microsoft's Xbox 360 launched with achievements and Gamerscore in 2005, and PlayStation added trophies in 2008. Today an achievement or trophy pop-up appears on top of nearly every console game, and Steam draws its own through the overlay.

Pros and cons:

Good toasts are short, appear at the edge and do not block the view. They confirm an action without making you stop.
Bad toasts appear in the middle of a fight, stack up in a long queue or repeat information you already have.

Control them in the notification options of the game, the platform (Steam, PlayStation, Xbox) and the operating system. Windows has a Do Not Disturb / Focus Assist mode that holds back notifications while you play. If you stream, switch off friend and message notifications, because they can show private information to viewers.

Tooltip

A tooltip is the small box that appears when you point at an item, ability, icon or status effect. It is where games put the detail they cannot fit on the main screen: stats, descriptions, cooldowns, costs, requirements and set bonuses.

Things that help you read tooltips well:

Compare gear. Many RPGs show your equipped item beside the one you point at, with stat differences in green or red. In some games you hold a key (often Shift) to see the comparison.
Read what is listed, not what is implied. A tooltip shows a number as the game chooses to display it. It may leave out hidden factors or show base values before modifiers; see stat modifiers.
Look for expanded tooltips. Some games show more detail with a held key, for example exact item ranges or values.
Use keywords. Underlined or coloured words in a tooltip often open a second tooltip that defines a term.

On controllers, tooltips often need a button press instead of a hover, and consoles can show them in a side panel. Accessibility options may change their size, delay or contrast, and are worth checking if text is hard to read.

Tracker

"Tracker" covers two things players call by the same name.

1. In-game trackers. A list on the side of the screen that follows your current goals: active quests, crafting recipes, achievements, resource totals or a boss's mechanics. You pick what to track, usually by clicking a checkbox or pin on the quest or recipe. A cluttered tracker is the most common HUD complaint in MMOs and RPGs, so most games let you collapse it or limit it to a few entries.

2. Stat trackers (outside the game). Websites and apps, such as tracker.gg, that collect public match data and show a player's win rate, kill-death ratio and rank. They usually collect match data that the game or its publisher makes available, so looking at them is harmless. Be careful with programs that read the game's memory or modify game files to produce stats, because that can break the game's rules and risk a ban. See cheats, mods and bans.

Use trackers to keep goals visible: track a few things at a time, remove completed ones, and use the in-game map to set waypoints for the objectives you actually pursue.

In-game overlay explains the panels that platforms such as Steam, Discord and your graphics-card software draw on top of the game: chat, friends lists, performance counters and screenshots. Steam's overlay opens with Shift+Tab by default, and Windows has its own Xbox Game Bar (Win+G). Overlays are separate from the game's own HUD and can occasionally conflict with it; if a game crashes on start, turning overlays off is a standard step in troubleshooting.