How a Glock trigger works: bar, cruciform and striker

A Glock trigger has no hammer, no manual safety lever and about a dozen parts, and it does something clever on every pull: it finishes cocking the striker, clears two safeties, releases the shot and resets itself when the slide cycles. Understanding that sequence is the difference between a safe trigger job and a dangerous one. This guide walks through the parts and the pull, one step at a time, using the names on Glock's own diagram.

The parts

Trigger: the shoe your finger presses, with the trigger safety blade pivoting in its face.
Trigger bar: a steel stamping pinned to the trigger, running back along the right side of the frame. Its rear end is the cruciform, a cross-shaped tab; its middle carries a ramp that lifts the firing pin safety.
Trigger housing: the polymer block at the rear of the frame that holds the ejector, the connector and the shelf the cruciform rests on.
Connector: a bent steel strip in the housing whose angled face pushes the cruciform down at the end of the pull.
Trigger spring: a coil that pulls the bar rearward and assists the pull.
Striker, or firing pin: the steel rod in the slide with a lug hanging down that the cruciform catches.
Firing pin spring, cups and spacer sleeve: the spring that drives the striker, held by two cups and guided by a sleeve.
Firing pin safety: a spring-loaded plunger in the slide that blocks the striker until lifted.

At rest

With a round chambered and the trigger forward, the striker is partly cocked: the slide's last cycle pulled it back and the cruciform caught its lug, holding the striker against about a third of its spring tension. The trigger safety blade stands proud of the trigger face and is blocked by the frame, so the trigger cannot move. The firing pin safety plunger sits down in front of the striker lug, blocking it. The cruciform rests on the shelf in the housing, so even if the trigger bar were jarred, it cannot drop and release the striker. Those are the three safeties Glock calls Safe Action, and they are all engaged without anyone touching anything.

The pull

Your finger presses the blade flush with the trigger face, which lets the trigger pivot. The bar moves rearward, and for the first fraction of an inch nothing else happens; that is the take-up. The cruciform, still on its shelf, pushes the striker lug back, finishing the cocking; you feel this as the wall. The ramp on the bar lifts the firing pin safety plunger out of the striker's path. Then the cruciform's rear tab reaches the connector's angled face and is pushed down off the shelf. The lug slips over the cruciform, the spring drives the striker forward and the primer fires. Everything from wall to break is a few hundredths of an inch.

The cycle and reset

The slide recoils. As it moves back, its underside pushes the connector inward and the striker lug rides over the depressed cruciform. The slide returns, the striker lug is caught by nothing yet, and when you let the trigger move forward the trigger spring pulls the bar back up onto the shelf, where the cruciform rises into the path of the lug. You feel and hear the click: that is reset. The striker is now partly cocked again, the plunger has dropped back into place and the blade has re-engaged. The pistol has returned to exactly the at-rest state, and one round has fired for one pull.

What the connector angle does

The connector face is the ramp the cruciform must slide down to release the striker. A steeper angle takes more force, which you feel as a heavier wall; a shallower angle takes less. That is why Glock's minus, dot and plus connectors change pull weight without changing any other part. The connector also fixes where in the pull the break happens, so an aftermarket connector with an overtravel tab that stops the trigger right after release makes the break feel shorter.

What the springs do

The trigger spring assists your finger, so a heavier one lightens the pull. The striker spring resists it, because you are compressing it, so a lighter one lightens the pull and weakens the strike. The firing pin safety spring resists the ramp lifting the plunger, so a lighter one lightens the pull and weakens the drop safety, which is why it stays factory. The three springs together account for roughly a pound of the pull; the connector accounts for most of the rest.

Where trigger jobs go wrong

Filing the cruciform or the shelf so the trigger bar sits lower shortens the pull and removes the drop safety at the same time. Filing the ramp so the plunger is lifted earlier means the plunger is not doing its job for part of the pull. Cutting the connector angle beyond what a minus connector gives can let the cruciform release under the striker spring alone. A pistol with any of these faults can fire when dropped or when the slide slams shut. Every part on this site is designed to keep the shelf, the plunger and the blade doing what Glock built them to do; polish surfaces, never remove metal from them, and run the checks in function checks after trigger work.

Reading it in your hand

Dry fire an empty pistol slowly and feel each stage: the blade going flush, the take-up, the wall as the striker finishes cocking, the break, then rack the slide, hold the trigger back and release it slowly to the click. Now you know what each part on the list is doing at each point. When a trigger part changes how one of those stages feels, you will know which part it was.

Browse Glock trigger groups and bars and connectors, and read trigger pull weight explained for how to measure what you feel.

General information, not legal advice. Current as of September 2026. Laws change; check the official source before you act.