KEYMAP//LABSInput intelligence
Signal online
EN
ENEnglish ESEspañol DEDeutsch FRFrançais ITItaliano PTPortuguês PLPolski RUРусский JA日本語
Menu
01Test02Tune03Convert04Guides05Games06Controls07Play
English Español Deutsch Français Italiano Português Polski Русский 日本語
Steam
Open world action · Updated 7 September 2026

Every guide calls these controls sluggish. None of them name the switch.

Red Dead ships three settings that decide whether an action is a tap or a hold, in three different menus, and the pages ranking for these queries mention none of them. The game also tells every player to match the horse's stride by tapping and never says what the stride is. This lab measures the half you can actually check — yours — and then hands you the switches that make it optional.

Measure your own spur The three switches What this cannot tell you

Tap the way you'd spur a horse

Any key, the screen, or a controller button — the bench reads all three. Tap a run at the pace you would actually ride at, then hold one at the end. It needs 8 presses before it says anything, and a silence longer than 2 seconds starts a fresh run rather than folding your pause into the rhythm.

Tap here, or press any key. Hold one at the end — the bench needs both to find where your tap stops being a tap.

Between spurs—
Tempo—
Wobble—
Drift—
Tap ends at—
Presses0
Keep spurring

Tap the key the way you would spur a horse — a run of taps, not one press.

No input yet
Keep and share this result

Save the numbers to your private Device Passport in this browser, or copy a card that shows exactly what was measured.

Open passport

Nothing is uploaded unless you contribute. Cards and links contain only the numbers shown above.

What this will not tell you Whether the game agrees. Rockstar has not published the stride the tutorial wants matched, or the duration the game reads as a hold rather than a tap, so this page does not pretend to know where either line sits. Every number above is a fact about your hand — how far apart your spurs land, how much that spacing moves, and where your own presses split into two groups. Those stay true whatever the game's thresholds are.

Three switches, three menus, one question

All five pages we surveyed open by calling these controls sluggish or mashy. Not one names any of the settings below — and all three decide the same thing: whether an action is a tap or a hold.

01Controls, at the very bottom

Tap and Hold Speed Control

The one that answers the gallop complaint directly: it decides whether speed is raised by repeated taps or by holding the button. It sits at the foot of the Controls options, below everything a reader scrolling for keybinds would stop at.

02Accessibility

The hold-to-run option

A second route to the same relief, in a menu most players never open because nothing suggests a movement setting would live there. It interacts with the control scheme below, which is why players report it "not working" — the scheme changed what it applies to.

03Controls

Control Scheme

The FPS variants move aim and fire to the layout a shooter player expects, which is worth knowing before you rebind twenty keys by hand to get there. Options: Standard · Standard FPS · Classic · Classic FPS.

These controls are not long. They are overloaded

Every table on the internet gives these keys one row each. They have two, and the second is a duration — which is why the bench in module one is the same argument as this table rather than a separate toy.

KeyTappedHeld
Left Shift
Cross (tap) / A (tap)		 Spur. Each tap asks for more speed, and the tutorial asks you to keep them in time with the stride. Keep the current pace without spurring again.
Q
R1 / RB		 Take cover against whatever is in front of you, or leave it if you are already there. Stay pinned while you move along the cover rather than peeling off it.
Caps Lock Enter Dead Eye. Stays open while the meter drains rather than closing on the release.
Tab A tap swaps back to the previous weapon. The wheel opens and time slows while it is open.

The question asked in five languages

How to crouch is the second-largest query cluster this game sends us, and it repeats in English, German, Spanish and Portuguese. The answer is not that crouch is missing.

L3 (press)on a pad

Crouch is a stick press

On keyboard it is Left Ctrl, an ordinary key. On a controller it is a press of the left stick — not a face button — which is why players look for it, fail to find it, and conclude the game has no crouch.

Qseparate button

Cover is not crouch

Cover sits on its own button (R1 on a pad) and puts you against a surface rather than lowering you where you stand. The two get confused because both make you smaller and only one is where people look.

Two numbers, asserted everywhere, measured nowhere

The surveyed pages hand out dead zone and acceleration values without reasoning, and two of them contradict each other. Neither offers a way to tell which is right for the reader — and one of these is about hardware, so it can be measured.

As low as your sticks allowControls

Aim/Look Dead Zone

Shipped at around half, which is high enough that aiming feels like it arrives late — the same complaint GTA gets, from the same slider. This is stick travel the game throws away before it counts as aiming, so dropping it to the floor your own sticks allow removes most of what reads as input lag.

Measure your own sticks first →

LowControls

Aim/Look Acceleration

How long the camera takes to reach its top speed while you hold the stick over. High acceleration means the same stick push turns a different amount depending on how long you have held it, which is exactly the thing that stops aim from becoming muscle memory.

All 37 cheats, and the 8 that need a newspaper first

Every cheat list prints these as one flat set. They are two sets, and the difference costs a playthrough: 29 need nothing at all, and 8 will not be accepted unless you are carrying a specific edition of a specific newspaper.

Entering a cheat is safe. Activating one is not. The save block and the trophy block arrive when a cheat is toggled on — not when the phrase is typed. So the order that costs nothing is: buy the papers, enter all 37, save, and then decide. Almost every guide opens with "cheats disable saving" and stops there, which reads as "do not enter them".

Chapter 5 takes your satchel, and the newspapers go with it. The 8 locked phrases cannot be entered during that chapter at all.
Strawberry Blackwater Valentine Annesburg Rhodes Saint Denis
A schematic, not a map. It shows how the six towns sit relative to each other and nothing more — the Blackwater Ledger is sold at two ends of the territory, and the Saint Denis Times nowhere near Valentine. No coordinates are claimed.
2towns

Blackwater Ledger

Sold in Blackwater and Strawberry. Buy every edition you are offered — the cheat needs the paper in your satchel, not merely read.

2towns

New Hanover Gazette

Sold in Annesburg and Valentine. Buy every edition you are offered — the cheat needs the paper in your satchel, not merely read.

2towns

Saint Denis Times

Sold in Saint Denis and Rhodes. Buy every edition you are offered — the cheat needs the paper in your satchel, not merely read.

Combat Loadouts and Dead Eye. The five Dead Eye levels are the game’s own progression, handed over at once.

CheatPhraseNeeds
Infinite AmmoEvery weapon and every ammunition type, unlimited. ABUNDANCE IS THE DULLEST DESIRE New Hanover Gazette #27 or Blackwater Ledger #62after “Eastward Bound”
Simple WeaponsCattleman Revolver, Springfield Rifle, Lancaster Repeater. A SIMPLE LIFE, A BEAUTIFUL DEATH nothing
Heavy WeaponsMauser, Bolt-Action Rifle, Semi-Automatic Pistol, Pump-Action Shotgun. GREED IS AMERICAN VIRTUE Saint Denis Times #46 or Blackwater Ledger #65after “Magicians for Sport”
Stealth WeaponsFire bottles, throwing knives, tomahawks, bow, machete. DEATH IS SILENCE nothing
Gunslinger WeaponsDouble-Action Revolver, Schofield Revolver, Double-Barreled Shotgun. HISTORY IS WRITTEN BY FOOLS nothing
Infinite Dead EyeThe Dead Eye meter never drains. BE GREEDY ONLY FOR FORESIGHT nothing
Dead Eye Level 1Targets are marked for you automatically. GUIDE ME BETTER nothing
Dead Eye Level 2You mark targets yourself. MAKE ME BETTER nothing
Dead Eye Level 3Dead Eye stays open after you fire. I SHALL BE BETTER nothing
Dead Eye Level 4Fatal areas are highlighted. I STILL SEEK MORE nothing
Dead Eye Level 5Critical areas highlighted as well as fatal ones. I SEEK AND I FIND nothing

Arthur The bars, and the two that raise rather than refill them.

CheatPhraseNeeds
Infinite StaminaStamina for you and for your horse. THE LUCKY BE STRONG EVERMORE Blackwater Ledger #68after “Dear Uncle Tacitus”
Refill All BarsHealth, stamina and Dead Eye back to full. YOU FLOURISH BEFORE YOU DIE nothing
Raise All Bar LevelsRaises the level of every bar. SEEK ALL THE BOUNTY OF THIS PLACE nothing
Fortify All BarsRefills and fortifies every bar. YOU SEEK MORE THAN THE WORLD OFFERS New Hanover Gazette #36after “The King's Son”

Horses and wagons Spawns and bonding. The horse cheats are the only ones that change something you keep.

CheatPhraseNeeds
Increase Horse BondingBonding raised on every horse you own. MY KINGDOM IS A HORSE nothing
Increase Horse Whistle RangeYour horse finds you from any distance. BETTER THAN MY DOG nothing
Create Race HorseSpawns a race horse. RUN! RUN! RUN! nothing
Create War HorseSpawns a war horse. YOU ARE A BEAST BUILT FOR WAR Blackwater Ledger #72after “The Wheel”
Create Superior HorseSpawns a superior horse. YOU WANT MORE THAN YOU HAVE nothing
Create Random HorseSpawns a random horse. YOU WANT SOMETHING NEW nothing
Create StagecoachSpawns a stagecoach. THE BEST OF THE OLD WAYS nothing
Create WagonSpawns a wagon. KEEP YOUR DREAMS SIMPLE nothing
Create BuggySpawns a buggy. KEEP YOUR DREAMS LIGHT nothing
Create Circus WagonSpawns a circus wagon. WOULD YOU BE HAPPIER AS A CLOWN? Blackwater Ledger #73after “The Landowning Classes”

World and money Map, money, outfits, recipes, camp. Four of these skip a hundred hours of ledger.

CheatPhraseNeeds
Fog of WarReveals the whole map before you have been there. YOU LONG FOR SIGHT AND SEE NOTHING Blackwater Ledger #66 or New Hanover Gazette #31after “The Joys of Civilization”
Add $500Five hundred dollars per activation, repeatable. GREED IS NOW A VIRTUE nothing
Own All OutfitsEvery outfit unlocked. VANITY. ALL IS VANITY nothing
Learn All RecipesEvery crafting recipe known. EAT OF KNOWLEDGE nothing
Purchase All Camp UpgradesEvery ledger upgrade, and the supply maximums raised. SHARE nothing
DrunkMakes you drunk. A FOOL ON COMMAND nothing

Honor Up, down, or back to neutral — the only three-way switch in the list.

CheatPhraseNeeds
Increase HonorHonor to maximum. VIRTUE UNEARNED IS NOT VIRTUE Blackwater Ledger #67after “Urban Pleasures”
Decrease HonorHonor to minimum. YOU REVEL IN YOUR DISGRACE, I SEE nothing
Reset HonorHonor back to neutral. BALANCE. ALL IS BALANCE nothing

The law Wanted level and bounties, in both directions.

CheatPhraseNeeds
Increase Wanted LevelRaises your wanted level. YOU WANT PUNISHMENT nothing
Decrease Wanted LevelLowers your wanted level. YOU WANT FREEDOM nothing
Clear Bounties and LockdownsRemoves every bounty and every lockdown area. YOU WANT EVERYONE TO GO AWAY nothing

Everything this site knows about Red Dead

Two pages, and they are not interchangeable: one is the reference you look a binding up in, the other measures the hand pressing it. Every figure below is counted from what each page actually holds.

43 bindings keyboard25controller18settings8 in 2 RDR2 controls Every default bind on keyboard and pad, dated, with the settings behind them. 6 benches keyboardyescontrolleryestouchscreenyes RDR2 input lab You are here
Asked about these controls

The questions this page can answer.

How do you crouch in Red Dead Redemption 2?

Left Ctrl on keyboard, and on a controller it is a press of the left stick — L3 on PlayStation, LS on Xbox. That is why the question keeps being asked in five languages: crouch was never missing, it is bound to a stick click rather than a face button, and cover sits on an entirely different button (Q, or R1/RB). Nothing in the game surfaces either fact while you are playing.

What is the gallop rhythm in Red Dead Redemption 2?

The game’s tutorial tells you to match the horse’s stride with your taps instead of spamming the button, and then never mentions it again — no tempo, no range, no feedback. Rockstar has never published the stride, so no site can honestly tell you the target number. What can be measured is your own cadence: how far apart your spurs land, how much that spacing wobbles, and whether it drifts over a run. That is what the bench on this page does.

Does tapping to gallop work on keyboard in RDR2?

On keyboard the gallop is a held key rather than a rhythm, and players have reported for years that tapping changes nothing there — the rhythm instruction appears to have been left in from the controller version. We cannot read the game’s internals and do not claim to. What this page can show you is the difference between what your keyboard sends when you tap and when you hold, which is the input the game has to tell apart either way.

Why do my Red Dead controls do two different things?

Because most of them are one button with two meanings separated by how long you hold it. Cover, crouch, the weapon wheel, Dead Eye and the gallop all read a duration, and every control table on the internet prints them as a single row. Your own presses split into a short group and a long group with a gap between; presses that land inside that gap are the ones the game has to guess about.

Where to go next

Keyboard tester Confirm the key you spur with actually reports every press, before reading a rhythm off it. Open Click speed test The same hand measured without a rhythm to keep — the ceiling your cadence sits under. Open Gamepad tester On console the spur is a face button and crouch is a stick press. Check both reach the browser. Open Every default binding The verified reference table, dated, with the controller layout beside it. Open Other game labs The same treatment for the rest of the library. Open