Vertical videos are great in apps like TikTok or Instagram, but full screen content is meant to be watched in landscape. The problem is, your iPhone isn’t always set up to switch to landscape. Typically, you don’t want your screen shifting when you tilt your phone, so you likely keep portrait orientation lock on—a feature that conveniently keeps many apps from showing full screen videos in landscape. But you can use automation to automatically turn portrait orientation lock on and off when switching between normal iPhone use and watching full-screen videos.
Set portrait orientation lock automatically
To start, open Shortcuts on your iPhone, then go to the Automation tab and tap Create Personal Automation.
On the next page, choose App. This will show you the triggers page. Check both Is Opened and Is Closed, and tap the Choose button next to App. You can now go through the list and select all the apps you use to watch videos, and tap Done.
Press the Next button in the top-right corner and tap Add Action. Search for Set Orientation Lock and tap it. If you’ve done this correctly, you’ll see Toggle orientation lock on screen. Tap Next, and on the next page, disable Ask Before Running, hit Don’t Ask on on the pop-up, then tap Done.
That’s it! Your automation is now ready to go. The moment you open any of the apps you’ve selected, iOS will disable portrait orientation lock, and you can simply turn your phone to watch videos in full screen. When you leave these apps, your iPhone will toggle portrait orientation lock back on.
For this to work smoothly, you should keep portrait orientation lock on. The automation is set up to disable the lock if it is enabled, and vice-versa. If that limitation annoys you, then you can set up two automations instead of a single one. In one of them, the trigger should be Is Opened, and in the second one, it should be Is Closed. After selecting the apps for the automation, you can tap the Toggle button in the Toggle orientation lock step and change it to Off in the first one and On in the second one. That way, portrait orientation lock will be disabled the moment any of the selected apps is opened, and enabled again when you close those apps.
