Sometimes you may need to rotate your iPhone or iPad screen without physically tilting the device. Maybe your rotation sensor is broken or it’s physically impossible. If so, there is a way around it. Here’s how.
An accessibility feature built into the iPhone and iPad called AssistiveTouch provides a context menu that lets you simulate physical movements, gestures, and button presses from a centralized interface. One of its features is to change the orientation of the screen without you having to physically move your iPhone or iPad.
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To use AssistiveTouch to rotate the screen, you must first enable it. To do this, open Settings on your iPhone or iPad.
In Settings, select “Accessibility”.
In “Accessibility”, tap on “Touch”.
In the touch settings, tap on “AssistiveTouch”.
In “AssistiveTouch”, tap the switch next to “AssistiveTouch” to turn it on.
When you toggle the switch next to AssistiveTouch, a special button (looks like a rounded gray rectangle with a white circle in the middle) appears near the edge of the screen.
Exit out of settings and open the app you want to rotate. You’ll notice that the AssistiveTouch button stays onscreen and turns translucent when not in use. You can drag it around the edge of the screen with your finger if you want to reposition it.
When you’re ready to rotate the screen, press the AssistiveTouch button once. A black square menu with rounded corners will appear on the screen. Tap “Device”.
The AssistiveTouch menu will change and present a new set of options. Tap “Rotate screen”.
Again, the AssistiveTouch menu will change, this time presenting you with four rotation options. Note that these are four absolute screen positions. They are not relative to the current screen position (for example, you cannot keep pressing the “Right” rotation button to continue rotating the screen to the right.).
Tap the rotation option you want to use.
After tapping, the screen will rotate to that position. To revert it, you can use the AssistiveTouch > Device > Rotate Screen option again or simply physically rotate your device until the orientation is reset.
If you want to lock the screen orientation so that it isn’t changed by physically moving your device, open Control Center and tap the Orientation Lock button (which looks like a circular arrow with a padlock inside).
After that, close Control Center and your iPhone or iPad screen will stay rotated the way you like it, no physical movement required!
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