Left-stick sprint

How do you sprint in GTA 6?

Reportedly by clicking the left stick while you walk, instead of tapping X on PlayStation or A on Xbox. Kotaku and TheGamer both report it, and both trace it to MikeShowSha, a YouTuber who visited Rockstar North for a preview. Kotaku says he relayed that Rockstar confirmed it, and TheGamer says he got hands-on time with the game, which it puts at two hours.

That makes it a second-hand report of a creator preview. We haven’t found a Rockstar controls sheet, post or video that describes sprinting, so we keep it at reported, not confirmed.

How is that different from earlier Rockstar games?

Kotaku says that in many Rockstar games, including Red Dead Redemption, you mash X or A to sprint, and the faster you mash the faster the character moves. It adds that this made running from police harder and turning the camera awkward. TheGamer calls GTA the big exception to the click-to-run habit in other games, and says the tapping has gone on for decades.

Kotaku also says GTA V had an option to hold X to sprint, plus an L3 setup for first-person play. If Kotaku is right, GTA V already offered an alternative to tapping, and what is reported as new here is the standard control.

In our view, the practical effect will show up in foot chases: Edge’s cover story describes getting away from police by ditching vehicles and slipping down back alleys, and our lose the police guide collects what has been reported. One click is easier on the thumb than a long run of taps.

Can you turn tap-to-sprint back on?

Nobody knows. Kotaku says it expects the full game to ship with controller options that change how sprinting works, pointing to GTA V’s settings. That is Kotaku’s expectation, not something Rockstar or MikeShowSha said, and some players in Kotaku’s piece say they want to keep tapping.

What else don’t we know about the controls?

Rockstar hasn’t published a full button layout, so we can’t say how aiming, cover, the weapon wheel or the phone map to the controller. Sprint is one detail from one preview. We’ll update this page if Rockstar posts a controls guide or the game ships and we can check it.