How and Why to Back Up Key Bindings in Elite Dangerous

If you’re reading this, it’s likely that it’s time for a big Elite Dangerous update. While the servers are down and everybody is ramping up the excitement, it’s worth doing a couple of things to ensure your continuing enjoyment of this deep space epic. One of the first things is backing up your key bindings. If you’re anything like me you’ve spent hours and even weeks editing, testing and refining your in-game key binds. As the title has expanded past the original ship-based play we now have separate sections for on-foot, in SRV and in ship as well as general controls and other mode switches. If you’re new to the game, you may also want to check out our Beginner’s Guide to Elite Dangerous which can help you starting out.

Updating your game files for these major updates has a habit of wiping out the custom key bindings that you’ve spent hours meddling with. Luckily, there’s a relatively simple way to keep a backup of these, which you can put back in place following the update if (when!) you find you’re back to standard controls. We’ll give a huge shout out here to CMDR GreyAreaUK who passed this information on to us for our first major PC update. It’s a really quick and simple process:

On your PC, open your Windows File Explorer (the little folder icon)

Browse to C:\users\

Enter the folder linked to the user name you log on with

From here, navigate to AppData\Local\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\Options

N.b. that folder above was Frontier Developments and NOT Frontier_Developments

In the Options folder, you’ll see a folder called “Bindings” – it should be below Audio and above Development

Right click this folder, and hover over “send to”, and then choose “compressed (zipped) folder”

That’s it!

This will compress everything in the Bindings area into a separate compressed folder. Importantly, it will also leave the current settings where they are (just in case miracles happen and it keeps them for some reason).

There is, however, a second thing that it’s important to remember on patch day! Mostly, this is simply that it’s patch day! If you’re hopping in game on the day of a large update, there are a few things you should expect. This includes lovely new content, maybe a new video, new enemies, new stories and gameplay. It also includes connectivity issues, bugs and general faffery within the game.

You definitely should play on patch day, it’s a lot of fun. We would ask though that you don’t go gung-ho in ranting ramblings on Twitter and Facebook (check out the wonderful Elite Dangerous Community on Facebook, if you haven’t already). Bear with the Frontier team while they try to sort out issues. If you think they won’t be aware of an issue, official forums and bug reporting is the best place to let them know.

Hopefully that’s set you up well for patch day. Enjoy playing and don’t forget to share your adventure with Pixel Bandits, wherever you head to!