Hollow Knight: Silksong: Best PC Controls and Settings

Hollow Knight: Silksong shipped with a settings menu about as minimal as its 2D combat is dense, and that catches a lot of new players off guard. There's no sprawling graphics-options wall to hide behind, no ray-tracing toggle, no upscaler picker — get the handful of PC-specific controls and video settings wrong, and you'll fight Pharloom's bosses with input lag or color banding you didn't need to deal with. Here's how to set the game up properly on Patch 5, the last major update before the free Sea of Sorrow expansion.

01Patch 5 Is the Version You Should Be On

Team Cherry shipped Patch 5 (build 1.0.30000) on PC on March 16, calling it the last significant update before Sea of Sorrow, the free expansion the studio confirmed is coming later in 2026. The bulk of the patch is Traditional Chinese and German localization work plus stability fixes, rather than anything to the options menu, which means the settings you configure today should carry over cleanly once the expansion lands. Earlier patches did touch settings, though: Patch 1 in September 2025 was mostly early-game bug fixes, and Patch 2 that November is the one that actually added a new PC-only video option, which matters for the banding fix later in this guide.

If you only just started the climb toward the kingdom's peak, open this newcomer's primer on Pharloom's core systems alongside the settings checklist below. It covers the early-game structure this guide assumes you already understand, so you're not trying to learn the map and your keybinds in the same sitting.

02Remap Your Controls First

Silksong's default keyboard layout puts movement on the arrow keys and actions on the letter row: Z to jump, X to attack, C to dash, S for your harpoon (Clawline), A to bind, D for the Needolin, F for your equipped skill, with Tab and M covering the quick map and full map respectively. It works, but the arrow-key movement scheme trips up anyone coming from a WASD-first library, and the split hand position makes fast dash-attack strings harder than they need to be.

The game supports full remapping on both keyboard and controller, and every prompt in menus and tutorials is drawn from your current bindings rather than a fixed icon set — so there's no visual penalty for moving things around. Pull up Options > Controls and move movement to WASD, then slide Jump, Attack, Dash and Harpoon onto keys your right hand can reach without stretching. Do this before you start learning boss patterns; relearning muscle memory mid-fight against something like the Bell Beast is a bad time to discover your bindings don't fit your hands. Leave the Hunter's Journal, Crests and Tasks menu keys wherever's comfortable — you'll open them between fights, not during them, so they don't need to be under your attack hand.

03Controller Setup and Button Prompts

Silksong has full native support for Xbox, DualShock/DualSense and Switch Pro-style controllers, with correct button icons drawn for each pad rather than a generic Xbox-style prompt slapped over everything. If Steam Input intercepts your pad and shows the wrong prompts or double-inputs menu selections, set the controller's Steam Input configuration to "Disable Steam Input for this game" or force the Gamepad template that matches your pad, rather than fighting Silksong's own remapping screen for a controller Steam is also trying to manage at the same time. This double-handling is the most common cause of controller inputs feeling "sticky" or delayed on PC, and it has nothing to do with your frame rate.

Whichever input you land on, remap it before you lean on it. Bosses in this game punish hesitation, and a half-second of fumbling for a Harpoon bound somewhere awkward will cost you a phase you'd otherwise have cleared. If you split time between keyboard and controller, it's worth setting up both properly up front rather than defaulting to whichever one you grabbed first.

04Dial In Resolution, V-Sync and Your Frame Cap

The video options are short: display mode (fullscreen, borderless or windowed), resolution, V-Sync, a frame rate cap, Particle Effects and Blur Quality. There's no anti-aliasing or shadow-quality slider to chase — Silksong is a hand-drawn 2D game with a fixed art style, so almost all of your performance headroom comes from the frame cap and V-Sync interaction rather than a graphics-preset ladder.

Run fullscreen or borderless at your monitor's native resolution. Leave V-Sync off if you're on a high-refresh panel and want the lowest input lag for parries and pogo jumps; turn it on only if you're seeing screen tearing on an older 60Hz display. Set the frame rate cap to match your monitor's refresh rate rather than leaving it uncapped — Silksong's combat timing windows are tuned around a stable frame pace, and an unlocked, fluctuating frame rate makes precise dodges feel inconsistent even when your average FPS is high. If you're running this on a handheld like Steam Deck, capping to the panel's native refresh and leaving Particle Effects on its lower setting is the safest starting point before you touch anything else.

PC Settings Checklist

1. 1Open Options > Controls and move movement off the arrow keys onto WASD. Reassign Jump, Attack, Dash and Harpoon to keys under your right hand so dash-attack strings don't require a hand shift.3 min
2. 2Choose fullscreen or borderless at your monitor's native resolution. Windowed mode is there for Alt-Tabbing, not for regular play.1 min
3. 3Set the frame rate cap to match your monitor's refresh rate. Leave V-Sync off for the lowest input lag unless you're seeing tearing on an older 60Hz panel.2 min
4. 4In Advanced video settings, enable the Dithering option added in Patch 2 if Pharloom's gradient skies show visible color banding. It can slightly soften foreground sprites, so toggle it per scene.1 min
5. 5If prompts look wrong or inputs feel delayed, set Steam Input to "Disable Steam Input for this game" (or force the matching Gamepad template) so Silksong's own remapping handles your pad.2 min
6. 6Check Properties > Steam Cloud for this game before a long session, especially if you split time between a desktop and a Steam Deck. Let sync finish before closing the game on either device.1 min

05Fix Banding and Stutter

Patch 5 didn't touch video settings, but Patch 2 back in November 2025 added a Dithering toggle under Advanced video settings, PC only. It's off by default and exists specifically to reduce color banding in Pharloom's gradient-heavy skies and lighting — turn it on if you notice visible stepping in backgrounds, though Team Cherry's own patch notes flag that it can slightly soften foreground sprites, so treat it as a per-scene trade-off rather than a setting you leave on blind.

For stutter, the most commonly reported fixes from the PC community aren't in-game settings at all: verify your game files through Steam or GOG if a stutter persists after a fresh install, keep GPU drivers current, and close overlay software (Discord, GeForce Experience, Steam's own overlay), since Silksong's engine has shown sensitivity to overlay injection on some systems. Players who see black screens specifically during cutscenes have reported success installing the Microsoft HEVC Video Extensions from the Microsoft Store, which patches a codec gap on some Windows installs. None of these are officially documented Team Cherry fixes — label them as community-reported workarounds rather than confirmed engine behavior — but together they resolve the majority of stutter and playback complaints without touching a single graphics slider.

06Save Backups and Cloud Sync

Silksong supports Steam Cloud, and it's worth confirming it's actually syncing before you sink hours into a Steel Soul run — permadeath and a corrupted or unsynced save file are a miserable combination. Check Steam's per-game Cloud setting under Properties, and if you ever swap between a desktop and a Steam Deck, give the cloud sync a few seconds to finish before closing the second device; Silksong's save files are small, but a hard alt-tab or shutdown mid-sync is the one thing that reliably eats progress on PC.

07Lock In Steel Soul Mode Only After Your Settings Stick

Once you've settled on bindings and video options, Silksong's Steel Soul mode is worth knowing about even if you don't start there: it's a permadeath challenge mode unlocked after finishing the base campaign, confirmed in Team Cherry's own feature list for the game. It's the one place where a bad keybind or a missed V-Sync setting actually matters beyond frustration. Don't switch input methods or fiddle with your frame cap mid-Steel Soul run — get everything dialed in during a normal save first, then carry the exact same configuration over.

Hollow Knight: Silksong will be available September 4 on all platforms and day one on Xbox Game Pass! Watch the release trailer: https://youtu.be/6XGeJwsUP9c

— Team Cherry (@TeamCherryGames), Aug 21, 2025 on X

None of this replaces skill against Pharloom's roster of over forty bosses and two hundred-plus enemies, but a clean set of bindings and a stable frame pace removes the excuses. Everything above should still apply once Sea of Sorrow adds its new areas later this year, since Team Cherry has been explicit that Patch 5 was the last settings-relevant update before that expansion ships.