Keep your CS2 config through an update, a crash, or a new PC

CS2 settings go missing more often than they should. An update resets something, a crash writes a half-finished file, you reinstall Windows, or you sit down at a friend’s PC and none of it is yours. This is where the files are and what is worth keeping.

Where the files are

Everything you set lives under your Steam install, in the CS2 game folder:

Steam/steamapps/common/Counter-Strike Global Offensive/game/csgo/cfg/

Two files there matter. autoexec.cfg is the one you write yourself and the one worth backing up. There is also a per-account folder under userdata holding what the in-game menus wrote, and that one is Steam’s to manage rather than yours to edit.

Why it disappears

Cloud sync losing a race. Steam Cloud keeps your settings, and when two machines disagree it picks one. Playing on a second PC before the first has finished uploading is the usual way a config gets replaced by an older one.

An update writing new defaults. Valve occasionally renames or retires a cvar. A line in your autoexec naming one that no longer exists does not stop the file, but the setting it was there for reverts.

A crash mid-write. The game writes your settings on a clean exit. Closing it any other way can leave the file as it was before the session, which is why a change you made and never got to keep is the commonest complaint of all.

What is actually worth keeping

Not the whole folder. Most of what is in there the game will rebuild, and a wholesale restore into a newer version is how you end up debugging someone else’s stale cvars. Keep the handful of things that are yours and slow to reconstruct:

Your crosshair, as a share code. Settings → Crosshair → Share or Import gives you a CSGO- string that carries every value in one line.
Your sensitivity and DPI, written down as numbers. These are two settings and the pair of them is your aim.
Your binds, as the lines you would paste into the console.
Your launch options, which live in Steam and not in the game, and are therefore not in any backup of the game.
The parts of your autoexec you actually change — not the file you copied from a video three years ago.

That list is short on purpose. It fits on one screen, it is readable by a human, and none of it depends on a file surviving anything.

Getting back

With those five things, a fresh install is a few minutes: paste the crosshair code into the import box, type two numbers into the sensitivity field, paste the binds into the console, and put the launch options back in Steam. No file restore, nothing to go stale, and it works the same on somebody else’s machine as on yours.

Where to keep it

Anywhere you will still have it. A note on your phone works. A Steam profile works, badly — it is a wall of text and editing it mid-game is unpleasant.

This site is the version I built for myself: a page you own, no account, holding those five things as tiles you copy with one click. It also opens inside the Steam overlay, so the crosshair code is one Shift + Tab away when somebody asks for it mid-match.

Make a page

The list above is the useful part, though, and it works written on anything.