Screen Orientation in your Capacitor App

Many apps work well in portrait and landscape device orientations. However, many don’t, and there are good reasons to require an app to function solely or occasionally in one mode or the other.

Global Orientation Settings

To set a global setting for orientation in your Capacitor app, you’ll set the configuration value necessary for the platform you’re targeting.

iOS Configuration

iOS allows for different screen orientations to be supported on iPhones and iPads. To limit the allowed orientations for iOS, open Xcode and open the Info.plist file. Find the following keys: Supported interface orientation and Supported interface orientation (iPad). Using these values, specify the different orientations you would like supported for iPhones and for iPads.

If editting the Info.plist file directly look for the following keys: UISupportedInterfaceOrientations and UISupportedInterfaceOrientations~ipad. For example, the following settings will limit the orientation to right-side-up Portrait on iPhones and either of the Landscape orientations on iPads:

  <key>UISupportedInterfaceOrientations</key>
  <array>
    <string>UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait</string>
  </array>
  <key>UISupportedInterfaceOrientations~ipad</key>
  <array>
    <string>UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight</string>
    <string>UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeLeft</string>
  </array>

Android Configuration

On Android, orientation can be set by modifying the AndroidManifest.xml and setting android:screenOrientation on the <activity> entry for your main app activity. See the Android Manifest Documentation for details on the possible entries.

Dynamic Orientation Settings

Many apps need to support multiple orientations, with the ability to lock orientations occasionally depending on the content.

Capacitor supports this through the cordova-plugin-screen-orientation plugin:

npm install cordova-plugin-screen-orientation
npx cap update

Then, use the lock and unlock methods available on window.screen.orientation:

window.screen.orientation.lock('portrait');
window.screen.orientation.lock('landscape');

// To unlock orientation which will default back to the global setting:
window.screen.orientation.unlock();

See the Orientation Plugin Docs for the full range of possible orientation values and configuration options.

iPad Orientation Lock

By default, an iPad allows Multitasking and its orientation cannot be locked. If you need to lock orientation on an iPad set the option Requires Full Screen to YES by adding the following to Info.plist:

    <key>UIRequiresFullScreen</key>
    <true/>