Android 101: How to enable / disable screen rotation | Android Central

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Android 101: How to enable / disable screen rotation

Help & How To
By Jared DiPane | Nov 02 2011 | 3:52 pm  | 16 Comments

Orientation

Ever lay in bed trying to send a text message only to have your screen fight your for which orientation it wants to be in? Yeah, well it gets old quick trying to do something in portrait mode while your display is switching to landscape mode, doesn't it? Luckily with just a few simple clicks you can take care of this issue and lock your screen into portrait mode.

  1. Open your device settings
  2. Scroll to display
  3. Check / un-check Auto-rotate screen

Having the box checked will allow the phone to determine based on the way it is held which direction the screen should be going, and unchecking the box will lock it into portrait mode for you. 

Jared DiPane

Jared DiPane Slayer of the News

"News Writer for Mobile Nations. Husband. Father.
Technology lover with an unhealthy Chipotle addiction."

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Reader comments

Android 101: How to enable / disable screen rotation

16 Comments
larrytxeast

I use {Auto Rotate Widget (Jason Hull)} from the Android market, it gives you a widget you can put on the home-screen to make this a much quicker change. Even so, I remove the Google search-bar on my home-screen & replace it with the power widget--too bad that widget doesn't have auto-rotate on it. (I never use Bluetooth nor do I ever turn off sync, other than letting JuiceDefender do that.)

What I would really like--something that always locks it in portrait except for when you're opening a text-editing field & activating the keyboard, at which time it would immediately assume landscape, then immediately resume portrait after. I ALWAYS use portrait except when typing, at which point I ALWAYS use landscape.

LRH

reidoreilly

The number one most annoying feature of phones. This is the first thing I disable on all devices. I would love to buy a droid with a slide out keyboard, but I dont want to use the phone in landscape when I want to use the keyboard. Does anyone even make a portrait slider like the dell venue pro?

CeluGeek

In a Landscape slider it makes sense for the screen to rotate to landscape when you open the keyboard, otherwise you'd have to tilt your head sideways to see what you are typing. I don't know if this applies to all landscape QWERTY sliders but the Samsung Intercept and the MyTouch 3G Slide rotate on opening the keyboard regardless of the Display Rotation setting; that setting is for the accelerometer, not the hardware slider event.

CeluGeek

What really annoys me is programs that do not respect this setting. I can, reluctantly, let the video player slide as being hardcoded to Landscape mode, but I get really annoyed with apps like QuickOffice and Bejeweled 2, which auto-rotate even when you turn off screen rotation in Display Settings!

paulkoan

As always, computers are there to do silly menial tasks fire you.

Install llama, tell it when you go to bed and tell it to turn off auto rotate at that time.

Then donate.

speculatrix

HTC phones have a neat 1x1 widget to disable auto-rotation.

When I slide out the keyboard on my DesireZ aka G2, properly the HTC Vision, it will rotate regardless.

If you run Sense 3 then the rotation setting is available from the status bar drop-down/quick settings.

I couldn't find a picture of the widget, sorry.

TardisPilot1992

I always have this problem when lying in bed using my phone. I used AutomateIt to fix this. at 10:30, my usual bed time, it automatically switches off the Rotation function.

YossiD

What I think is really needed, and I don't understand why this isn't a built-in feature of Android, is a function to manually rotate the screen, either with a hand gesture (twisting fingers?) or with a widget or some other selectable option. If Android can rotate the screen automatically, it stands to reason that it should be technically possible to do it manually as well.

I have searched considerably for an app to do this but I haven't found anything yet. Does anyone know of one? And can anyone tell me why Android doesn't have this as a native feature?

Kevindroid

Yeh let me kno if u find one too. Im sik of autorotate doing it wen i dont want an sumtimes needing an xtra twist to get it to move. I jus wanna b able to twist one or two fingers on the screen or jus maybe slide an arc shape in th direction i want the screen to rotate - surely cant b that difficult to code up.

Kevindroid

Jus wondered if Apples iphone has manual rotate function - perhaps it mite b copyright why android doesnt have it?

Tharkon

What would be great if you could configure what rotations would be possible. For example. For example, if you could configure the screen to rotate if the phone is tilted to the left but not if it is tilted to the right, or vice versa, depending on what side you lie on when in bed, then you can have it stay in portrait when in bed but still have it switch to landscape automatically when needed.

ShiroiNeko

I have a different problem. I like auto rotation. I enabled it in the menu under the display options. However, time after time it is turning itself off and locks my screen in portrait again, and I have go to turn on auto rotate again - even I didn't turn it off in the first place. Can anyone explain, what is going on? Am I pressing something accidentally? I don't press turn auto rotate off and don't go accidentally to that menu. Is it a virus of some sort doing this? Any of my apps? Is the phone getting dead? I have no clue >_< I did factory reset once before, to solve another problem - with Google Chrome, when I browsed, the screen would kind of multiply one segment of the page a la error, after reset it was ok, then started again shortly. And I'm like "frustrating!".

spbone

I hate that you can't rotate the home screen on Android, even on v4.4.4, and I would've also liked it to be able to rotate reverse portrait like the iOS devices.