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I can't stand iPhone's auto-rotation feature, e.g. rotate your phone just past some threshold, and the screen rotates from portrait to landscape.

This is always tripping me up, especially when I'm lying down and simply want to read my iPhone in portrait mode.

Is there a way to just disable the feature altogether?

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It's really annoying isn't it. Pretty much the only reason I jailbreak is for Rotation Inhibitor. – Rich Bradshaw Oct 19 '09 at 18:44

migrated from superuser.com Jan 18 '11 at 13:36

3 Answers

up vote 11 down vote

You can lock the screen rotation on the iPhone 3GS and 4, running iOS 4, to portrait only by double pressing the Home button (bringing up the task switcher), swiping right to show the media controls and pressing the left most icon (looks like a refresh button), the rotation lock. When locked you will see a padlock in the icon and a new status bar icon of the same design.

Note: this does not affect applications which only run in landscape mode, such as most games.

Edit: Video of how to do this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYkUzYXtZT0

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I was disappointed that Apple didn't make this lock to the current orientation. It is simple and would make the built-in functionality much more useful. – g . Jan 18 '11 at 16:32
3  
@g I imagine this is because the iPhone does not have a landscape home screen (or phone, or calendar, or maps, or iTunes, or ...) orientation. It would lock landscape applications, say Safari, to landscape and you would need to rotate the iPhone every time you close and open the application. Portrait is the iPhones native orientation, unlike the iPad which doesn't really have a native orientation and thus locking to current mode makes more sense. – jtjacques Jan 18 '11 at 17:59
Could be, but that isn't a great reason; you have to rotate it anyway for applications that only run in landscape mode. – g . Feb 11 '11 at 12:22
up vote 2 down vote

No, there is no way to disable the accelerometer on an official iPhone.

Apparently for Jailbroken iPhones, there is a Cydia app called 'Rotation Inhibitor' (thanks JeffP) that lets you disable tilting for Safari and music mode. Info is here, but I have no experience with it.

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If you read the comments on that post, the program on Cydia is called "Rotation Inhibitor" – JeffP Oct 19 '09 at 17:12
Thanks, added to the answer. – th3dude Oct 19 '09 at 17:17
up vote 0 down vote

With the advent of the iOS 6+ Accessibility feature "Guided Access", there is a workaround for this. It limits a few things but it completely works if you really need a solution.

  1. To enable the feature you will use, navigate to Settings > General > Accessibility > Guided Access and flip the toggle to ON. Set a passcode.

  2. Navigate to the app you wish to lock rotation in, and rotate the device to a landscape orientation.

  3. Triple-click the Home button. Depending on how other Accessibility options are set, you may need to then select Guided Access from a popup that appears.

  4. Select Options and disable Motion. Press Done, followed by Start.

This will now lock the rotation in a lanscape orientation! Unfortunately it also disables all hardware buttons, so you will be unable to switch apps, lock the device, or adjust the volume until you triple-click the Home button again to disable Guided Access.

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