CS2 demo commands

Demo playback in CS2 is driven from the developer console. Enable it once under Settings → Game → Enable Developer Console, then open it with the ` key.

Starting a demo

playdemo replays/match-name
playdemo mydemo.dem

Paths are relative to game/csgo/, so a file in the replays folder is addressed as replays/<name>. The .dem extension is optional. Compressed files (.dem.gz, .dem.zst) have to be unpacked first.

Playback

Command	What it does
`demoui`	Opens the playback panel: play, pause, scrub, speed
`demo_togglepause`	Pause and resume, handy on a bind
`demo_pause` / `demo_resume`	Pause or resume explicitly
`demo_gototick <tick>`	Jump to a tick; the fastest way to a known moment
`demo_timescale <factor>`	Playback speed, e.g. `0.25` for slow motion, `4` to skip ahead
`demo_info`	Prints information about the loaded demo

Camera and spectating

Command	What it does
`spec_player <name>`	Follow a specific player
`spec_mode`	Cycle first person, third person, free camera
`spec_show_xray 1`	See players through walls
`spec_freeze_time 0`	Removes the kill freeze-cam delay

If the console refuses a command during playback, check whether it needs sv_cheats 1 first. Command names occasionally change with game updates.

A clean picture for recording

cl_draw_only_deathnotices 1
cl_drawhud_force_radar 0
hud_showtargetid 0

That strips the HUD down to the kill feed, which is what most highlight clips use.

When the browser is faster

Console commands are precise but slow to work with: no overview of all rounds, no side-by-side stats, and every jump means typing a tick number. For "what happened in this round" and "who threw what", a 2D replay in the browser gets you there in seconds, without launching the game.

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