About KeybindsBackup
"Back up your keybinds!" is a common refrain amongst Elite Dangerous* players when a patch or game update drops.
We've all been there - we start our favourite game after an update, and the roughly 400 keybinds we spent 3 hours configuring and many more hours refinining have ... vanished.
Side note...
Why does this happen? When you set up a Custom keybinds file in Elite, it will only load under one condition: all the controllers defined in the file are plugged in and recognised by windows.
If you start Elite and your keybinds are gone, do not go in and start redefining keys. If you do, it will just create a new default Custom file and your original will be overwritten. (Don't panic, the game even keeps backups of its own which you can copy back over the useless file.)
You can even check which device is causing issues by going to %LocalAppData%\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\Options\Bindings and then opening the file BindingLoadingErrors.log in a text editor.
Note what it's complaining about. E.g. one of my old binds has this error:
Missing devices: ArduinoLeonardo
Plug in the missing device and rerun the game.
Anyway, back to the program. Keybinds Backup will quickly and painlessly back up your keybinds. Just run it, configure it (it should guess the right settings anyway), and remember to run it now and then in future. You can even have it back up your keybinds automatically when you run it.
You might not be aware of another trick Elite has up its sleeve: it can handle custom keybinds files with unique names.
Keybinds Backup will let you rename your Custom keybinds file to anything else (e.g. My_Logitech) and will also change the title inside the file. When you run Elite, My_Logitech will be available in the controller dropdown for you to choose.
If your controller isn't present and Elite only shows 'Custom', you know there's an issue with the stick... and not only that, if you connect it properly and restart the game, My_Logitech will still be there to select - containing all your carefully configured keybinds. Phew.
* Elite Dangerous is a trademark of Frontier Developments
