Forza Horizon 6

Keyboard // GUIDE 01

FH6 / Input guide 01

Keyboard driving guide

Every keyboard binding, and the limit behind them: three steering states and two throttle states, which no setting in the game changes. What to do about it, and what to ignore.

View default controls Measure your own

8 min read · Reviewed 2026-09-21

Starting setup

A configuration sheet rather than a list of numbers. Nothing below is a measured optimum, because on a keyboard almost nothing is adjustable in the first place — which is the useful finding.

Row	Starting point	Why
Steering	3 states	Full left, centre, full right. The game smooths between them; the states do not change.
Throttle	2 states	Pressed or not. Nothing in the settings makes it a range.
Transmission	Start automatic	Manual adds three keys to a hand that already has no spare fingers. Add it once the rest is comfortable.
Driving assists	Leave the default	The published default is Medium, which keeps anti-lock braking and stability control on.
Steering assist	Standard	Standard damps some physical effects, which is doing more work for a keyboard than for a stick.
Deadzones	Do not touch	They operate on a continuous axis. Given three states there is nothing to trim and nothing to bend.

Pit note Suggested starting points, not tested optima. Where this site publishes a number it says where the number came from.

Essential bindings

Hover or tap a key to read what it does and what it costs. This is the same drawing the lab lights up on a real press.

Accelerate

on / off

On or off. There is no partial throttle on a keyboard, and no setting adds one.

Steering

This is the whole subject of the page. A keyboard puts the steering axis into three states and there is no setting anywhere in the game that adds a fourth. The deadzone and linearity controls in the advanced menu operate on a continuous axis; given an axis that only ever reports -1, 0 or +1, linearity has nothing to bend and a deadzone has nothing to trim.

What the game does instead is smooth the result on its way to the car, which is why a keyboard car does not spin the instant a key goes down. That smoothing is doing more work for you than any assist, and it is why the honest keyboard advice is about WHEN you press rather than what you set.

Measure	Keyboard	Controller
Steering	Three values	Continuous, -1.00 to +1.00	controller
Throttle	Two values	Continuous on a trigger	controller
Partial input	Not available	The normal case	controller
E-brake	A key, instantly	A button, instantly	even
Assistant options	One key each	Two presses each	keyboard

Measure it The lab counts how many distinct steering values your own device produces. A keyboard reaches three and stops; watching that happen is more convincing than being told.

Manual shifting

Shift up is E and shift down is Q, with the clutch on Shift — and none of the three do anything until the transmission is changed from automatic in the difficulty menu. That ordering catches people out often enough to be the second most common shape of “my controls are not working” for this game.

Manual with clutch puts three extra keys under a hand that is already holding W and steering with A or D. It is worth adding after the driving is comfortable rather than with it, and worth moving if the default positions conflict.

Remapping

Every action can be rebound in the controls menu, and the game stores up to five custom profiles. The profiles matter more than they sound: a keyboard profile and a pad profile can both exist, so switching devices does not mean rebuilding a layout.

Common problems

Input keeps switching The game follows whichever device produced input most recently, so a controller left connected with a stick resting off centre keeps stealing focus. The lab reports resting drift in the same units the game’s deadzone settings use.

Shift keys do nothing The transmission is still automatic. Change it in the difficulty menu first; the bindings are inert until then.

Camera key is wrong Switch camera is Tab, not C. C opens the assistant. One published guide has these the other way round.

What a keyboard cannot be given

It is worth being precise about the thing this page keeps returning to, because the imprecise version — “a controller is better” — is both true and useless.

A game reads steering as a number. A stick hands it any number between full left and full right; a keyboard hands it one of three. The game is free to smooth what arrives, and this one does, which is why a keyboard car is drivable rather than undrivable. What no amount of smoothing can do is invent a value the device never sent. Deadzone and linearity controls operate on a continuous axis, and an axis with three states gives them nothing to work on.

That is the whole finding, and it decides what the rest of this page can honestly recommend.

What is worth changing

Bindings, and only bindings. The default driving plate puts everything a hand needs within reach, which is why the useful changes are usually about what you add rather than what you move: manual shifting puts three more keys under a hand that is already busy, and the assistant layer puts four more on the number row.

Both are worth adding one at a time, after the driving itself is comfortable rather than with it.

Where the measurement comes in

The counter that settles this is in the Input Lab. It counts the distinct steering values your own device produces while you drive. On a keyboard it climbs to three and stops, however long you keep going. It is a small thing to watch happen and it settles the argument better than a paragraph does.

Horizon Input System

The rest of the system

Cinematic dashboard

Overview

What the input system looks like end to end, and where to go next.

Data explorer

Controls

Every default binding, by layout, searchable in three seconds.

Telemetry workstation

Input Lab

Reads your own keyboard, pad or wheel and shows what the game would see.

Calibration bench

Controller

Sticks, triggers, deadzones and the fourteen numbered layouts.

Garage engineering

Wheel

Sixty tested devices, twenty-six settings, and why your motor is silent.