Backup and restore your keybinds

For Elite Dangerous Horizons and Odyssey

If ever you've started Elite Dangerous only to find all your custom controller settings are gone, this guide is for you.

(Before you go through all the manual steps, I have now written a program that not only backs up your keybinds to date-stamped files, it also does all of the stages below. See ED Keybinds Backup on my sister site, Spacejock Software. And yes, it's free to download and use.)

What we're going to do is stop using the 'Custom' keybind, and instead create our own file which the game won't delete or replace.

Step 1. go to %LocalAppData%\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\Options\Bindings

Step 2. Duplicate Custom.3.0.binds (Horizons) and Custom.4.1.binds (Odyssey)

Step 3. Rename the new duplicates to (for example) My.3.0.Binds and My.4.1.Binds

Step 4. Edit the two new My.x.x.Binds files with Notepad

Step 5. change <Root PresetName="Custom" near the start of the file to <Root PresetName="Mine" This step is really important. What you put in there instead of Mine is up to you, but I wouldn't use spaces, non-ascii or long strings. Also, do not use something which is a standard, existing name - like TMasterX or Xbox360 or Thustmaster or similar. I use My_G940.

Step 6. Save both files out

Step 7, Start Elite Dangerous. When you go into Options - Controls you'll see a dropdown with Custom selected. Click this and you'll see 'Mine' in there - or whatever you used in step 5, NOT step 3. Select it. In Odyssey, you need to do this for all four controls categories - General, Ship, SRV and On Foot.


Also, if you start the game with a controller not connected which is used in your keybinds, Elite will switch to a set of keybinds that does not include this controller. In this case, connect the controller and select 'Mine' (your step 5 name) from the dropdowns again, as above.

I've also published a guide to improving your frame rates in Elite Dangerous: Odyssey.