Learn all the essential CS2 console commands for every situation
Looking for a list of Counter-Strike 2 console commands?Console commands in games are typically associated with cheats, and cheats in competitive games likeCounter-Strike 2are typically frowned upon. But there are lots of different uses for the various console commands available in CS2, and some of them are actively encouraged if you want to maximise your FPS and performance in Valve’s new flagshipFPS.
In this comprehensive guide toCounter-Strike 2console commands, we’ll explain how to open the console, how to rebind your console key, and how to create your own autoexec file to automate console commands every time you launch the game. We’ll also go over our list of the various CS2 console commands you can use to control the game, and we’ve even highlighted a dozen or so of the very best Counter-Strike 2 console commands to use if you want to boost FPS and minimise lag!
How to open the CS2 console
Here’s how to easily open the Counter-Strike 2 console from in-game:
By default, the hotkey to open the console in CS2 is the key between TAB and ESC in the top-left of your keyboard. On UK keyboard layouts this should be (`), while on US keyboard layouts the key should be (~).
You can also rebind the hotkey to open the CS2 console to something that’s easier for you to use. To do this, head back into the Settings menu but this time click on the “Keyboard / Mouse” tab.
Then click on the “UI Keys” secondary tab (or scroll down to find the “UI Keys” section), and change the key next to “Toggle Console” to whatever key you’d like to use to open the console in Counter-Strike 2.
Many of these commands require use in an autoexec.cfg file rather than the in-game console. The section below explains how to set up your own autoexec.cfg file.
Below we’ve highlighted some of the very best Counter-Strike 2 console commands that we’ve found to boost your FPS and minimise lag of various kinds while playing CS2. Not all of them may help you in your particular setup, but it won’t hurt you to try them out and see if you notice any performance impact!
Note: we recommend setting these commandsusing an autoexec.cfg fileinstead of through the in-game console, because many of these commands will reset to their default values each time you launch CS2.
Best CS2 console commands for FPS:
Setting the FPS cap to zero is shorthand for removing the FPS cap limit altogether. This means Counter-Strike 2 will run as fast as your machine can handle, rather than arbitrarily stopping once it hits a certain number of frames per second.
This command will disable the ragdoll physics of player corpses, freeing up a little bit of CPU draw if you’re playing on an old CPU-bound machine.
VProf is a visual profiling tool that runs in the background while CS2 is running, and collects information in order to optimise the game’s performance in the long run. Unfortunately, if you’re particularly CPU-bound, then just having this running can result in reduced performance. That’s why encourage turning VProf off and seeing if you notice any improvement.
just like VProf, IV is a profiler (this time an “interpolation variable profiler”) which runs in the background while CS2 is playing. The resources that it uses up while running may seem negligible to many, but to some playing on lesser machines it can be worth disabling this profiler to improve performance.
This console command disables the automatic contextual hints that appear in-game, such as “you have the bomb, take it to the bombsite”, and so on. Not only are these hints distracting and pointless once you know the game, but disabling them can actually have a marginal performance effect for low-end machines.
This command, as you can imagine, disables the avatar images for players in Counter-Strike 2. These avatars are taken from Steam itself, and disabling them can free up some small tidbits of resources for both CPU and GPU.
If you really want to make CS2 as lightweight as possible for your poor ailing PC, you can use this command to remove the friendly fire warning that appears on your crosshair when you aim at a teammate. Just make sure you can tell friend from foe without its help!
The next few commands aren’t exactly about boosting FPS, but they can help make the game feel much better and minimise instances of lag and choppiness in-game. Interpolation smoothes out the movement between packets of data sent from the server to the client. It relates to how accurate the client feels during moments where the difference between client and server appears at its fullest.
The cl_updaterate command has a very similar job to the cl_interp command. Both relate to interpolation times. It seems like cl_updaterate’s default value is 20, which is far too low for our liking with a competitive game like Counter-Strike 2. Set it up to 128 ticks and see if you feel a difference when combines with the other commands in this list.
The final interpolation-related console command we recommend changing is cl_interp_ratio 1. By default this value is 2. As we understand it, the game actually figures out the interpolation time by finding the higher of the following two values: first, cl_interp; and second, cl_interp_ratio divided by cl_updaterate. Setting the updaterate up and the interp_ratio down smoothes the interpolation, making things feel a lot nicer in-game.
This console command probably won’t make any noticeable difference to your CS2 performance, but it won’t hurt to disable it and see. Essentially it stops a particular process from writing data to a file with each network update.
Many Counter-Strike 2 players like to set up what’s called an autoexec file, which is a text document in the game files which automatically runs a bunch of console commands every time you start CS2 - so you don’t have to type the commands in every time. Many commands only work (or are only practical) if used in an autoexec file.
Here’s how to set up an autoexec file for CS2:
If you follow all of these steps, you’ll find that any console commands you input into that autoexec.cfg file will automatically be activated whenever you launch CS2, so you never have to manually enter those commands again. Lovely!
That concludes our comprehensive guide on how to use all the best console commands in Counter-Strike 2 to boost FPS, minimise lag, control private matches, customise your HUD and crosshair, and much more. For even more useful options, check out our guide on thebest CS2 settings, and our list ofCS2 crosshair codes.
