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Excellent tip ! I don’t care so much about rotation lock, but was able to modify the automation to address a different pet peeve: I normally use dark mode, but find it hard to read for maps. So using this same automation approach, I was able to select Maps as the app, and for the action, search for “dark mode”, choose the setting, and voila!

I did have to create two automations, one to switch to light mode on app open, and the other to switch back to dark mode on app close, but it works! A long standing annoyance, gone.
I did that too, although I can't figure out how to do the same thing to Maps on my Macbook Air??
 
The ONLY time I need to turn on orientation lock is when I'm using my phone in bed, since I'm sideways so it would otherwise turn things sideways.

What I don't get is why Apple hasn't fixed this. It would be trivial to do so. Just use the FaceID sensor to determine if your face is horizontal with respect to the phone, and rotate things accordingly.

This would work everywhere. In bed, in the cockpit of an F-16 flying inverted, on the ISS... there's no need to involve the accelerometer at all other than detect the phone being rotated so you can check orientation with FaceID.

It's so obvious; why hasn't Apple done this? Hey Apple, if for some crazy reason you haven't thought of this, please use my idea. I hereby license it to you for free. There we go. Have at it!
 
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I'm not sure, the iPhone version is called "Portrait Orientation Lock" while the iPad just has "Rotation Lock". The latter doesn't switch anything when activated.
It is horrible there is that difference. I sometimes watch a video on the TV app laying down, and the display changes to portrait if I move onto my side. I wish full "Rotation Lock" was available on the iPhone to stop this behaviour. It is stupid that I can lock landscape video to portrait, but not landscape.
 
... speaking of orientation, how about when the iPhone is in landscape and navigating using Maps, that when the screen comes back out of sleep, the maps is still in landscape instead of portrait. How hard is it to for the phone to know its still in landscape, so leave the Maps the same. Anyone know the reason for this, or how to work around it ?
 
Shortcuts is such a mess. It's ridiculous having to do all the above in order to achieve such a simple thing.

All these years later and I still don’t use the Shortcuts app. I literally have no idea how it works, how to create and set them, what is possible with the app…nothing.

It’s impossibly unfriendly to new users, lol. I literally spent some time on google a few years back trying to figure it all out…I gave up.
 
I was thinking the same thing. I see tutorials for some amazing things the iPhone can do with the Shortcuts app, but then I see the instructions and I’m like “nah, I’ll pass.”

Don’t know how some people come up with this stuff. It’s impressive because I never would be able to figure it out on my own.
Completely agree. Soon as I start to read the steps on how to do it, quickly lose interest. Maybe I’m just lazy… but I want it to just work and not have to mess around with shortcuts.
 
All these years later and I still don’t use the Shortcuts app. I literally have no idea how it works, how to create and set them, what is possible with the app…nothing.

It’s impossibly unfriendly to new users, lol. I literally spent some time on google a few years back trying to figure it all out…I gave up.
Agree. Shortcuts doesn’t seem like an apple approach. Feels like an android experience and that jars me 😵‍💫
 
ahhhh great for POGO which started going into battery saver screen whenever you even slightly turned towards landscape and stayed in battery saver mode when bring it back to normal layout. Definitely helped for that app. Thanks for the tip!
 
Nice and handy tips! That was very helpful. Thank you!

Anyone miss the Landscape Mode on iPhone?

View attachment 2209169
Other than the status bar, that looks awesome!

My last large iPhone was the 7+ before switching to the iPhone 12 mini and now the 13 mini. One thing I miss was landscape mode the + models had (I think the 7+ had it...?) and find it so annoying having to switch between portrait and landscape when quickly switching between apps to check things.

Although, on the mini landscape would probably be less useful.
 
Shortcuts is such a mess. It's ridiculous having to do all the above in order to achieve such a simple thing.
Shortcuts itself isn't a mess or at least the culprit. It's iOS that's to blame. Shortcuts exists to get around the sh.tfight that is iOS. Like most people though, I'm not prepared to perform ridiculous mental gymnastics to bend space time just to do something that should be built into the OS by default (especially when it only works half-baked anyway like in this tutorial).
 
I just followed the directions very carefully and 100% did it exactly as directed. Complete fail. Am I surprised? No. I used a ton of Apple products and they all glitch all the time. Boring.
 
Shortcuts itself isn't a mess or at least the culprit. It's iOS that's to blame. Shortcuts exists to get around the sh.tfight that is iOS. Like most people though, I'm not prepared to perform ridiculous mental gymnastics to bend space time just to do something that should be built into the OS by default (especially when it only works half-baked anyway like in this tutorial).
Seems pretty simple and straight forward.
 
Thanks for this article. This is super useful, I set up two seperate shortcuts to turn it off when YT opens and turn it on when YT closes. Works good so far.

One of the big issues for me with Shortcuts is you never know if an update is going to m,ess with the functionality of your Shortcut.
Another potential maintenance item every time you update.
Disappointing.

The biggest issue for me is that iOS sends me a push notification every few weeks to tell me I have automations enabled. I know I have automations enabled because I enabled them. I hate how iOS treats users like toddlers who need to be supervised at all times.
 
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I'm surprised that almost everyone I see taking videos and photos with their phone shoots vertically. I would think that a horizontal photo or video would be much better suited if viewed on a monitor or AppleTV. There must be a reason that movies are shot horizontally, not vertically.
 
I'm surprised that almost everyone I see taking videos and photos with their phone shoots vertically. I would think that a horizontal photo or video would be much better suited if viewed on a monitor or AppleTV. There must be a reason that movies are shot horizontally, not vertically.
Because people don't like to flip their phones horizontally, at all. That's why TikTok is vertical only. And most people just want to take a picture and then maybe share it with friends, who will see the photos in vertical format only.
 
Shortcuts is such a mess. It's ridiculous having to do all the above in order to achieve such a simple thing.
Just as Microsoft is using AI for its M365 Copilot, Shortcuts will eventually I expect, be replaced by similar across all Apple OS
 
This is AWESOME! When I work out, I like to put my workout app in landscape mode. But I have to toggle the orientation lock as I have it locked most of the time. I won't have to now. Thank you!
 
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