HUD Customization Interface Guide

The HUD (Heads-Up Display) is the entire holographic interface projected across your cockpit canopy — the gauges, panels and markers the game draws on top of the world. In lore it's the ship's interface; in practice it's the layer you read to fly, fight, trade and navigate.

The ship HUD is built from one persistent overlay plus three pull-out panels you summon with the directional keys/stick. Knowing the panels cold is a survival skill — being able to instantly re-route power or pick an escape vector can save a rebuy. The breakdown below follows the NEWP HUD guide's anatomy.

The main flight overlay

The three pull-out panels

• Navigation panel (left) — system contacts, the Transactions tab (active missions, bounties, fines), the Contacts tab (request docking here), and the Target sub-system tab for module sniping. Houses the galaxy-map and system-map buttons — both worth a dedicated keybind.
• Comms panel (top) — chat, inbox, social/friends, history, squadron feed, and the text-channel settings.
• Systems / ship panel (right) — commander info and rebuy cost, the Modules tab (toggle modules and set power priority), Fire Groups, ship options, inventory (cargo/materials), faction status, and Galnet radio.

"Orange fatigue" is a real and widely-shared complaint. Beyond aesthetics, recolouring the HUD has practical and accessibility payoffs.

There is no setting for HUD layout. You cannot move, resize, hide or re-order panels and gauges — the geometry is fixed. What you can change is colour, and how much control you get depends on the method.

With the built-in XML matrix (vanilla, no mods)

• You change: the colour of the entire ship HUD at once — panels, gauges, text, radar, the lot — by transforming the game's source colours.
• It also affects, like it or not: shield/contact colours, friend/foe markers, warning text, the galaxy & system map, and commander avatar portraits (these always shift, sometimes dramatically).
• You cannot: recolour one element independently of the rest. Every HUD pixel runs through the same matrix. You also can't change layout, fonts or sizes.

With the EDHM shader mod (advanced)

• Per-element colour — set distinct colours for individual HUD components instead of one global transform, avoiding the "everything turns one colour" problem.
• Cabin lighting — recolour (even bi-colour) the cockpit ambient light, and dim the dashboard lights that glare into your eyes.
• In Odyssey, EDHM exposes RGB values for many individual HUD/panel elements; in Horizons you can blend XML colours with EDHM's set.

The game draws the HUD in a base palette built around its signature "star orange." Before display, every colour is multiplied by a 3×3 transform you supply. Understanding the maths means you can read and write presets by hand instead of guessing.

Each output channel is a weighted mix of the three source channels. The three XML lines are the rows of the matrix:

Read mathematically, for a source pixel (R,G,B):

# MatrixRed   = r1, r2, r3   →   out.R = r1·R + r2·G + r3·B
# MatrixGreen = g1, g2, g3   →   out.G = g1·R + g2·G + g3·B
# MatrixBlue  = b1, b2, b3   →   out.B = b1·R + b2·G + b3·B

• Values aren't capped at 0–1. You can use values above 1 to boost intensity and negative values to subtract a channel — many sharp presets use numbers like 1.75 or -1 to push saturation or carve out a hue. (Some old reports note negatives behaved oddly in early Horizons; they work in current builds.)
• Keep warnings legible. The danger reds and info blues run through the same matrix. The clever "purple HUD that keeps red warnings" presets work by leaving a small amount of red in MatrixRed rather than zeroing it.
• This is why web editors exist — eyeballing nine numbers against a live preview beats blind trial-and-error (the NEWP / Arkku editors below).

The vanilla method: edit one file, restart the game. Always edit GraphicsConfigurationOverride.xml, never the base GraphicsConfiguration.xml — the Override survives game patches and a mistake there is far less likely to break anything.

1. Close Elite Dangerous

   Close it entirely. The file is read at launch.

2. Find the file.

   On Windows it lives at:

   File location · Windows

   %LOCALAPPDATA%\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\Options\Graphics\GraphicsConfigurationOverride.xml

   Paste that path (including %LOCALAPPDATA%) into the Explorer address bar. If your Windows profile is relocated to another drive, it resolves under that profile's AppData\Local instead of C:. macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Frontier Developments/…/Options/Graphics.
3. If the file doesn't exist, create it

   Create it as a plain-text file with exactly that name (watch for a hidden .txt extension), and paste the default block below into it.

4. Back it up first.

   Copy the file (or the default block) somewhere safe before editing. This is the one-line insurance policy everyone recommends.

5. Edit the matrix.

   Inside <GUIColour> → <Default>, replace the three <Matrix…> lines with your chosen values (from a preset or a web editor's output).

6. Save, close, launch.

   The new colours appear the moment you're in the cockpit — no further toggles.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<GraphicsConfig>
  <GUIColour>
    <Default>
      <LocalisationName>Standard</LocalisationName>
      <MatrixRed> 1, 0, 0 </MatrixRed>
      <MatrixGreen> 0, 1, 0 </MatrixGreen>
      <MatrixBlue> 0, 0, 1 </MatrixBlue>
    </Default>
  </GUIColour>
</GraphicsConfig>

Copy-paste starting points, drawn from long-running community preset collections. Treat the swatches as approximate — the exact result depends on the source palette, so preview in a web editor before committing. Each row is the three matrix lines in R / G / B order.

Things specifically worth knowing on PC / Odyssey before and after you change anything.

• Is it allowed / will it get me banned? No. The effect is purely client-side; Frontier has stated it has no problem with HUD colour mods and has even featured customised HUDs. The XML edit touches no game mechanic and no server data. EDHM is likewise a strictly graphical mod.
• On-foot stays orange. The XML matrix transforms the ship HUD. In Odyssey, on-foot terminals and much of the suit HUD largely keep the standard orange/white and aren't recoloured by the matrix. EDHM's Odyssey version reaches more of these elements.
• Edit the Override, not the base file. GraphicsConfiguration.xml is overwritten on patches and a mistake can cause issues; GraphicsConfigurationOverride.xml persists across updates and is the safer target. (EDProfiler also writes here.)
• Commander portraits always shift. Avatar/mission-giver pictures are tinted by the same matrix — expect them to look "off" with strong palettes. There's no way to exempt them with the XML method.
• Friend/foe and warnings are at stake. Test your palette against a real contact (a hollow vs filled, green vs red marker) and a warning before relying on it in combat. If reds or the contact colours become ambiguous, dial back. This is the single most important safety check.
• VR: cooler/dimmer palettes noticeably reduce eye fatigue; EDHM's cabin-light dimming helps further with headset glare.
• After a big update, re-launch and glance at the HUD — the Override should persist, but verify, and keep your backup/preset handy just in case.