If you have an iPhone or an alternative with a similar feature set…
Then you should know that you can set up some automation that will unlock and lock and the screen orientation when opening or closing certain apps.
Shiiiiiiit. Why have I never thought of this before. It’s so simple it’s genius. Thanks
Yeah I find it’s the simple things you can appreciate more as in the long run the time saved adds up.
I also have the Backtap feature set to turn off WiFi as I find when I toggle in the control Center it’s not off and tries to connect to networks which just blocks traffic.
I never actually use unlocked orientation mode. It's normally just locked to portrait, but full screen video (YouTube, newpipe, etc) seems to temporarily override it (it automatically returns to portrait when I exit full screen). If I do need to go landscape then I'll tilt my phone and then press the rotate icon that pops up next to the android navigation buttons to trigger it to rotate to the current auto detected orientation but it stays locked and won't rotate back until I reorient and press the button again.
You can also do this on Samsung with the modes and routines settings.
Oh my god this is so useful, no more manual work. I have a Samsung phone and I used to tap the small circle which shows up when the screen is locked in portrait mode and you turn the phone. This is much better, love me some good automation.
Another thing I use the routines for is volume adjustment. You can automatically mute media volume when you leave your house and unmute it when you come back.
You can do sooo much more than this. Like have your phone not lock if you're connected to certain wifi, and you can add a lot of conditions that need to be met and/or actions for it to take. It's super awesome for example a simply quality of life thing for me is at a certain time on specific days my phone will lower volume, switch to power saving, blue light filter, do not disturb, all automatically.
I knew there would be a way for most phones.
How do I get to this?
Open the Shortcuts app, you should have it unless you’ve deleted it.
Now it should say “Turn” on blue at the start of the action, if it says toggle or ask each time, click it and choose “Turn”. Finally choose On or Off at the end of the action.
Click next, uncheck ask before running (otherwise what’s the point) and click done.
I set an iOS accessibility feature to double tap at the back of my phone to toggle device rotation.
Tasker is a long-time general Android alternative. Its UX isn't all that, but it works quite nicely for a bunch of cases. I've used it to force orientation or silent mode per app, to lock without biometrics, and there are ways to extend functionality, too.
What's the use-case for this? Full screen videos already default to landscape.
I have it so it's always off unless I open my photo gallery. If a game or video player is landscape only it will show up as landscape only.
Idk about iPhone but I have a ton of other things set up too. Certain things like if it's night time (like actually sleeping times), if my battery gets lower than a certain % it will automatically switch to power saving and close all media and games I may have left open.
If it’s off then to much angle on my phone makes it flip to landscape.
Some apps do not go full screen landscape while lock is on.