Star Citizen HOTAS and Dual-Stick Setup: Save and Restore Your Keybindings

A familiar set of controls can make Star Citizen feel like your own cockpit. Losing it after a reinstall is considerably less enjoyable. The game lets you load peripheral profiles, change individual bindings and export your setup, so you do not have to rebuild every button assignment from memory.

This guide covers the in-game process for joystick, HOTAS and dual-stick setups. It does not require a particular brand of hardware or a downloaded third-party utility.

Load a profile for the right peripheral

1. Open Options → Keybindings.
2. Use the peripheral selector at the bottom right to choose Joystick / HOTAS.
3. Open Advanced Controls Customization, then Control Profiles.
4. Choose the profile that matches your hardware and version, if one is listed.

A matching profile is a starting point, not an obligation to keep every assignment. If a frequently used action sits somewhere awkward, move it. Comfort and consistency are more useful than copying a layout that suits somebody else’s hands.

Change a button without rebuilding the layout

In the advanced bindings screen, select the appropriate peripheral and find the action you want. Double-click an action to capture a new input; right-click to unbind it. Review any conflict shown before accepting the change. A button assigned to two actions may behave very differently from the single action you intended.

If an action works from the joystick but behaves oddly after using the mouse, compare the assignments across both input types. Removing the conflicting assignment is a more focused first step than discarding your entire setup.

Export a copy before the next reinstall

Under Control Profiles, choose Save Control Settings and give the profile a recognisable name. The export is an XML file named in the form layout_YourName_exported.xml.

Look inside your Star Citizen installation at:

LIVE\USER\Client\0\Controls\Mappings

Copy the exported file somewhere outside the game installation. A backup inside the folder you are about to remove is not much of a backup. Including the hardware and date in your own backup folder name also makes an old layout easier to identify later.

Restore or import a saved layout

With the game closed, place the profile XML in that Mappings folder. Launch the game, return to Control Profiles and select it. In the import dialogue, review which input types will be replaced; choose None for keyboard changes if you want to preserve the standard keyboard setup.

For a community profile, use the creator’s accompanying instructions. Their layout may expect a particular device order or additional setup. Importing an XML file is not proof that every button now matches the diagram you found alongside it.

When the left and right sticks have swapped

The console command i_DumpDeviceInformation lists detected devices in order. If the bindings for joystick 1 and joystick 2 need exchanging, the documented command is:

pp_resortdevices joystick 1 2

Use it for the identified swap, rather than as a general cure for any control problem. If only one action is wrong, changing that binding is the smaller correction.

Once the controls are restored, Arena Commander’s Free Flight offers somewhere to get comfortable before committing to a longer trip. Keep the export; the point of doing this once is to avoid doing it all again.