How To Activate Cheat Mode

There’s a hidden mode in Celeste called Cheat Mode. What is it, and how do you activate it?

What is Cheat Mode?

Cheat Mode is a hidden mode in Celeste that unlocks all levels (including all main Chapters, B-Sides, and C-Sides) as well as Golden Strawberries and Variant Mode, which allow players to add modifiers to make the game more challenging. (Upon enabling Cheat Mode, the latter option is unlocked for all save files.)
However, Cheat Mode does not unlock any collectibles (i.e. Strawberries and Crystal Hearts), so you will need to get them yourself.

All of this is unlocked through natural game progression, namely by completing all Chapters and B-Sides, and all C-Sides for Variant Mode. However, if you want to unlock those features prematurely, you can activate Cheat Mode.

It should be noted that Cheat Mode is different from the game’s Assist Mode, which can be toggled at any time through the file select screen. Assist Mode allows players to add modifiers to the game intended to make the gameplay experience less difficult and more easily accessible. The two modes can be activated independently of one another, or both used at the same time.

How do you activate Cheat Mode?

Cheat Mode is enabled during the game’s Prologue. There is a hidden screen to the left of where you begin the area, containing Madeline’s car and some street lamps. On this screen, you must enter a special button combination.

The cheat code

The cheat code consists of the following actions:
Left, Right, Journal, Climb, Up, Up, Down, Left, Climb, Confirm

On a keyboard with default controls, this would translate to:
Left, Right, Tab, Z, Up, Up, Down, Left, Z, C

On an Xbox controller with default controls, this would translate to:
Left, Right, LT, RT, Up, Up, Down, Left, RT, A

On a PlayStation controller with default controls, this would translate to:
Left, Right, L2, R2, Up, Up, Down, Left, R2, Cross/X

If it worked, you should hear a sound effect, be taken back to the chapter select menu, and have this spiffy little ribbon on your save file:

Thanks for reading!

Thank you for reading! I hope you found this guide helpful.
If you have any further questions, feel free to leave a comment below. I'll try to respond to everybody.

Special thanks to Steam user Axyraandas for providing the cheat code in Celeste’s Discussion forum.

[will091812]

you can do something similar with Pizza tower, theres a line of code that tells if you have variant mode or not, just switch it to "Yes" or "True", depends on what you are using.

[Gamer Awesome]

oh forgor about this, just gonna say i asked in the celeste discord and managed to lock it! then i unlocked it like 3 days later damn celeste really isnt that long

[Discoh]

Ah sorry, I misunderstood your comment. You might be able to do that by editing your save with a text editor like Notepad (it's in XML format, so it's human readable), though I haven't tested that myself to see what it does.

[Gamer Awesome]

yeah but i want to completely lock it so i can unlock it properly later

[Discoh]

I believe you can toggle Variant Mode from the file select screen, same as with Assist Mode.

[Gamer Awesome]

how can i lock variant mode again?
i activated cheat mode just for fun but i dont like my actions having consequences

[RolinGP3 Labs]

AWESOME

[♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥]

shoutouts to me for being cool

[chuni]

thank you

[Eli Jebidiah Sheldon]

Shoutout to author for replying even 3 years later