Bind Builder

Put a Rust console command on a key: pick the key, pick what it does, pick the form, and copy the line. Or load your keys.cfg and read every line in it back, in this tab.

Build a bind

Pick a key

A name missing from the list is not proof the key is unbindable — see the legend.

Find a key Type the key you press — f6, mouse3, the arrow keys.

What the marks mean

In the Facepunch wiki's key table
Not in that table, and seen working in real configs
Neither — we could not confirm this name, which is not the same as saying it is wrong

Hold another key with it

Pick what it does

The things a key can be given: an action the game already has a name for, a command you would otherwise type, or a setting and the value to put it at. Pick one at a time — a key can run several, and that is the next step.

Find an action or command Searches what each one does as well as its name.

Show

Everything Actions Commands you run Settings you set

On this key, in this order

Nothing yet. One is a normal bind; several become the steps of a chain or a cycle, and the form step decides which.

Pick the form

Same key, same actions, three different binds. There is no default answer here because the three do genuinely different things, and the line under your choice says which.

What a press should do

Run once, on press Only while the key is held One step per press, then round again

Pick one and this line says what it does to the actions you chose.

Or start from a pattern

The 8 recipes below are fill-in-the-blank. Each one names what you have to supply and where that value comes from; choosing one fills the steps above, and you finish it.

Your bind

Pick a key and at least one action, and the exact line appears here.

Pasted at the console, this line is live but not saved. Run writecfg, or a crash takes it with it — how the file is written.

0 lines kept

Build several and they collect here as a block you can paste in one go.

The text, and where it goes

These are lines to ADD, not a file to install: a keys.cfg you overwrite takes every other bind with it. Paste them into the console one at a time, or append them to the file and check the two questions the reference answers — where the file lives, and when the game writes over it.

How the syntax works

Read your keys.cfg

Load the file and every line comes back explained: which key, which form, what each action is. Findings are sorted into five groups — broken, risky, redundant, worth knowing, and could not tell.

Steam > right-click Rust > Manage > Browse local files. keys.cfg sits either in that folder or in the cfg folder inside it — the sources disagree, so check both. Close Rust first: it rewrites the file on exit.

Drop keys.cfg here Choose a file

Or paste the file contents

No file loaded.

Your keys.cfg

Broken 0

The line is not written the way our sources write it, so we would not expect it to do what it looks like it does. What the client actually does with a line in this state is often something we could not establish, and each finding says so.

Risky 0

It works. It can also cost you something you did not intend to spend.

Redundant 0

A second copy of something you already have, or a line the client would do anyway.

Worth knowing 0

Not a problem. Something about this line is easy to be wrong about, so here it is in full.

Could not tell 0

We looked and could not decide — a name we have no record for, or a client behaviour no source we trust actually states.

Every line in your file, in order

How binds work

The 11 forms, what the file does between sessions, and where each of those claims comes from. Two sources, and the split is on every record below: command names, their signatures and the game's own registered help strings come out of the client's reflection dump, which is first party — that is why a few of these read vendor. How the parser behaves around them is documented on a wiki Facepunch hosts but does not author, so those claims read consensus, however official the address looks.

The reference below is rendered from this site's bind dataset, which needs JavaScript. The eleven forms it covers, with the shape of each:

the plain bind — bind <key> <command>

the semicolon chain — bind <key> <command>;<command>

the + held form — bind <key> +<action>

the ~ cycle — bind <key> ~<command>;<command>

the combo — bind [<key>+<key>] <command>, key names in the brackets and more than two of them allowed, which does not replace the base key: the base key's own bind fires as well

meta.exec — several commands as one cycle step

+meta.if_true / +meta.if_false — press branch and release branch

meta.reset_cycle <cycled key> — put a cycle back to step one

clearing a bind — bind <key> ""

input.printbinds — listing your binds

bind_default — the same as bind, translating the key token from US-QWERTY to your layout

The two blocks below it are rendered the same way: what the file does between sessions (where it lives, when it is written, the read-only trap, quoting, chat focus, our anti-cheat reasoning), and the eight questions about binds we could not settle — whether a cycle's position survives a restart, whether there is a cap on cycle steps, what the client does with a bad key token, and five more. The Command Reference is plain enough to read without scripting if you need the names now.

What the four evidence labels mean

measured: Established first-hand, and the record says how. Nothing on this page carries it: we did not test a bind.
vendor: First party — here that means the client's own reflection dump: a registered command name, its default, its admin flag, or the game's own help string quoted verbatim.
consensus: Community-established. On this page that is mostly the Facepunch wiki's keybind page, which Facepunch hosts but does not author.
inference: Our reading, unverified, and the record says what it is reasoning from. Where we could not even reason to an answer, it is a gap instead — the block at the end of this section.

The file, and what happens to it

What we could not confirm

We tested none of these and found no source we trust, so they stay open questions.

Where these facts come from