Does CS2 Have Raw Input?
Yes — and there is no switch, which is the part that confuses people
Yes, and it is not optional. CS2 reads your mouse as raw input with no in-game toggle and no working m_rawinput console command. There is nothing to enable. Because the game takes movement from the device rather than the OS cursor, Windows Enhance pointer precision does not shape your aim in CS2.
This question almost always comes from a CS:GO habit. In CS:GO, raw input was a setting you could see and a console variable you could set, and half the "best settings" posts on the internet still tell you to enable it.
In CS2 the toggle is gone. Not defaulted on with an option to change it — gone. Searching the settings menu for a raw input checkbox and finding nothing is the correct outcome, not a sign that something is broken.
What changed from CS:GO
| CS:GO | CS2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Raw input available | Yes | Yes |
| Settings menu toggle | Yes | No |
m_rawinput as a working switch | Yes | No |
| Can you play with OS-processed mouse input? | Yes | No |
The removal was not universally popular. Players used to Windows mouse acceleration asked Valve to bring back a choice between raw input and OS-processed input, and that request was closed without being planned. So this is settled behaviour rather than a temporary gap in the Source 2 port.
What raw input actually does
There are two ways a game can find out that your mouse moved:
- Ask the operating system where the cursor is. By the time Windows reports that, it has already applied your pointer speed slider and, if it is switched on, pointer acceleration. The game is reading a processed result.
- Read the device reports directly. This is raw input. The game gets the movement counts the mouse sent, before any desktop pointer processing. Your in-game sensitivity value is then applied to that.
The practical consequence is repeatability. With raw input, the same physical mouse movement produces the same in-game turn regardless of how the desktop is configured — which is exactly what you want when you are building muscle memory around a fixed sensitivity.
Note what raw input does notchange: your mouse's DPI and its polling rate are hardware-side settings and still matter just as much. Raw input governs how the data gets into the game, not what the mouse reports in the first place.
How this interacts with Enhance pointer precision
"Enhance pointer precision" is Windows' name for pointer acceleration. Windows watches how fast the mouse is moving and, past certain movement thresholds, scales pointer travel up so a quick flick covers more screen than the same distance moved slowly. It is a non-linear, speed-dependent adjustment, which is precisely why aimers dislike it: identical hand movements can produce different results depending on how fast you happened to move.
Because CS2 uses raw input, that adjustment sits outside the path your aim takes. The game is not reading the accelerated pointer, so the setting does not shape your crosshair movement in a match. Players who left CS:GO with Enhance pointer precision enabled did not silently gain acceleration when CS2 arrived — if anything, the forced raw input is what stopped them keeping it.
So should you turn it off? It is a reasonable thing to do, but be honest about why:
- It still affects your desktop cursor, your browser and any game that does not use raw input.
- Turning it off keeps your cursor behaviour consistent everywhere, which some people find helps when switching between titles.
- It will not change your CS2 aim, so do not expect it to fix an aim problem. If you want it off, it lives under the Pointer Options tab of the classic mouse properties dialog in Windows.
The acceleration raw input does not remove
If your aim in CS2 still feels like it accelerates, raw input is not the culprit and the OS is not either. The remaining candidate is your mouse itself. Acceleration configured in vendor software — or stored on the mouse's onboard memory — is applied to the movement counts before they ever leave the device, so the game receives already-accelerated data and has no way to know.
Check your mouse's own configuration software for anything called acceleration, angle snapping or smoothing, and turn those off if you want a genuinely 1:1 feel. This is also the reason two players on the same in-game sensitivity can report different behaviour.
What to do with an old config
If you migrated a CS:GO autoexec, a stale m_rawinput line is not going to break anything — but it is dead weight, and it is usually sitting next to other lines that no longer apply. Worth a cleanup pass:
- Open the console (our console guide covers enabling it if you have not already).
- Cross-check what you have against the current CS2 console commands reference and drop anything that no longer resolves.
- Rebuild the file properly using the CS2 config guide rather than patching a five-year-old one.
- Set sensitivity deliberately instead of inheriting it — the best CS2 settings guide covers how to pick a value and stop moving it.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Does CS2 have raw input?
- Yes. CS2 reads mouse movement as raw input, and unlike CS:GO there is no setting or console command to turn it off. There is no raw input checkbox in the CS2 settings menu because there is nothing to check — it is the only behaviour the game offers.
- What happened to the m_rawinput command?
- It was a CS:GO-era toggle that let you switch between raw input and OS-processed mouse input. In CS2 it is no longer a working setting, so there is no supported way to set it to 0. Players who wanted the toggle restored have asked Valve for it and the request was closed without being planned.
- Do I still need to put m_rawinput 1 in my autoexec?
- No. It achieves nothing in CS2 because the behaviour is already what you would be asking for. Carrying it over from an old CS:GO config is harmless but pointless, and it is one of several dead lines worth pruning when you rebuild your config.
- What does raw input actually do?
- It takes movement readings straight from the mouse device rather than the cursor position the operating system has already processed. That means Windows pointer speed and pointer acceleration are not applied on top of your aim — the game works from the device data.
- Should I turn off Enhance pointer precision in Windows?
- It does not change your CS2 aim, because raw input means the game is not reading the accelerated pointer. It still affects your desktop cursor and any application that does not use raw input, so plenty of players turn it off anyway for consistency. It is a preference, not a CS2 fix.
- Does raw input remove all mouse acceleration?
- It removes the acceleration the operating system applies. It does not remove acceleration configured on the mouse itself through its firmware or vendor software, because that is applied before the data ever reaches the game. If your aim still feels accelerated, check your mouse software.