Introduction

In this tutorial you will learn how to activate and open the command console in Counter Strike Global Offensive. If you want to know how to do that, it’s quite easy. There are two ways how to do it, in both cases we need to bind a key before we can open the console. Here are the two ways how to do it, you can choose one of the methods:

Method 1: Activate The CS:GO Console In The Settings Menu And Bind A Key

1. At the main screen of Counter Strike, click the “Options” button and go to the “Game Settings”.
2. Look for the entry called “Enable Developer Console” and set it to “Yes”.
3. Now click the “Options” button again and go to the “Keyboard / Mouse” settings.
4. Search for the entry “Toggle Console” and bind a key there. You could use any key, but set a key that is not used by Counter Strike, Steam or any other tool you run.
5. Done. Go back to the main screen and open the console with the key you did set.

Note: If you still can not open the console with the key you set, you might try to restart Counter Strike, then check if the console is still activated and if your key is still set, and try to open the console again. If it still doesn’t work, you might want to try the second method…

Method 2: Activate The Console Key With The Config File And Bind A Key

1. Search and open the folder “Steam\steamapps\common\Counter-Strike Global Offensive\csgo\cfg” and open the file “config.cfg”.
2. At the start of the file there should be quite a lot of lines with the command “bind”, these are the key bindings. Search for “toggleconsole”, if the entry is not there, add a new line like in my example below and as you see on my screenshots (F9 is the key I did set, choose a key you like):

   bind "F9" "toggleconsole"

3. Next and still in the “config.cfg”, search for the line that starts with “con_enable”, if it’s set to “0”, change it to “1” to activate the console permanently. Check my screenshots or the example below how it should look like:

   con_enable "1"

4. Start the game and in the main screen use the console key you did set, the console will open, you will also be able to open the console in the game. Done, you can finally start to use console commands for Counter Strike Global Offensive.

Now You Can Use The Counter Strike GO Console

I hope this guide helped you to learn how to activate the Counter Strike GO console, how to set a key for the console, and how to open the console. This console is quite handy if you want to use console commands for the time the game is running, but if you want to use certain console commands permanently, you should learn how to create a config file for CSGO instead. Happy gaming, or developing! If you liked the tutorial, feel free to share it or drop a comment below.