The simple Android screen app that saves my sanity

Fair warning: The tip you’re about to ingest has nothing to do with any of the fancy-schmancy, accuracy-challenged AI ballyhoo that dominates most tech news coverage at the moment.

Nope — it’s just a good old-fashioned utilitarian upgrade for your favorite Android phone. It’s simple, straightforward, and about as practical as can be. It won’t generate awkward prose or creepy images on your behalf, nor will it serve up any error-laden word stew masquerading as a factual “answer.”

It will, however, make your life instantly easier — and enhance your Android-using experience in an immediately noticeable and extremely significant way.

Specifically, it’s a simple-as-can-be step-up for the way your device handles something about as unsexy as can be: display rotation. Not exactly the sort of awe-creating, ad-inspiring idea that’s gonna be a bullet point on your next phone’s packaging — right?

But you’d better believe it matters. And it’ll make more of a difference in your day-to-day doings than any overhyped AI addition will ever possibly manage.

Lemme show ya how.

[Want even more advanced Android knowledge? Check out my free Android Shortcut Supercourse to learn tons of time-saving tricks.]

Android display rotation, reinvented

So, for context: Android has long had a native system for handling the dull-seeming chore of deciding when and how, exactly, your screen should rotate itself.

And, to be brutally honest: It’s always fallen short.

Surely you’ve noticed this, too, no? Rare is the time when your device just does what you want it to do when it comes to display rotation — y’know, figuring out when the screen should shift into its horizontal, landscape orientation vs. stay in the standard portrait mode (or perhaps even flip around 180 degrees into an upside-down version of either of those arrangements).

And while Android’s certainly gotten better at predicting your needs in that department over time, it’s still never been consistently great at just getting it right.

That’s where a teensy little app called, rather fittingly, Rotation comes into play.

Rotation has been among the unsung heroes of my personal Android setup for ages now, but somewhere along the way — probably whilst switching from one phone to another, at some point — I kinda lost track of it and stopped actively setting it up. I recently realized that, corrected my misstep, and rapidly remembered what an absolute gem this innocuous little power-tool is and how much it improves my endless on-screen interactions.

In its most basic form — which is absolutely how I’d suggest using it — the way Rotation works is enchantingly simple:

You just tell the app how you want your phone to handle rotation most of the time, by default.

For me, this is in a forced portrait orientation, without any automatic rotation whatsoever — ’cause few things irk me more than my phone’s screen flipping itself around when I don’t want it to (like when the device is sitting in my car at an angle or I’m leaning back on a couch, mayhaps, and it ends up getting into all sorts of wonky screen-rotation states as a result).

Then, you create a handful of specific exceptions for when you want that default position to change.

I limit these mostly to app-specific scenarios — so, for instance, Rotation knows that I might use Chrome, YouTube, or my Pixel phone’s Camera app in a horizontal position and so goes ahead and rotates the screen when those apps are open and being used and it seems like I’m holding the device in an appropriate position. But it also knows I virtually never want my screen to rotate when I’m looking at, say, Messages or my email or the Phone app, so it doesn’t rotate when those apps are actively in focus.

That’s the most useful element of Rotation for me, personally, but you can also explore other conditions — like telling the app to keep your phone in a specific locked-screen rotation position when you’re in the midst of a call, when your device is locked, or when it’s charging, docked, or connected to an audio device over Bluetooth.

The most important point here, however you want to set things up, is that you’ll only have to do this once — and Rotation will then just quietly work on your behalf, running in the background and making things work the way you want without ever requiring any active thought or effort again.

Ready to set it up for yourself?

4 minutes to a smarter Android screen

Here’s all there is to getting your new and improved Android rotation station running:

First, install the main Rotation app from the Play Store. The app and its core functions are free, and it should work on any reasonably recent Android device.

Open the app up and make your way through its welcome screens. When the app prompts you to authorize it as an Android accessibility service, tap the “Accept” button followed by “Settings” and then follow the steps to find “Rotation” and activate it (typically via a “Use Rotation” toggle — not the toggle labeled “Rotation shortcut”).

Follow the steps to activate the few other permissions the app requests and requires to run effectively.

Rotation has been around for quite a while now. It’s reputable and well-reviewed, and its privacy policy is clear about the fact that it doesn’t collect or share any manner of user data.

Capische? Capische. Once you’re done with that initial part of our one-time setup, tap the “Finish” button to make your way to the app’s main screen. (You might be briefly peeved by a pop-up ad at some point along the way, by the way. You can eliminate those ads and unlock a handful of extra features via the app’s optional $4 premium upgrade, if you want — but the ads notably don’t show up anywhere during your regular day-to-day use, and all the basics work fine with or without the upgrade in place.)

Still with me? All right — next:

Think carefully about what display orientation you want your phone to use by default. I’d suggest considering “Forced portrait,” as I described above, which then lets you have that act as the norm and whatever scenarios you choose next to act as the exceptions to the rule.

Tap the line corresponding with “Forced portrait” or whichever orientation you want.

“Forced portrait” is a fine starting place for any Android display rotation setup.JR Raphael, Foundry

Now, for the exceptions: Scroll down in that same settings screen until you see the lines labeled “Call orientation,” “Lock orientation,” Headset orientation,” “Charging orientation,” and “Dock orientation.” If you want your phone to act differently during any of those events, tap on any of those options to adjust accordingly (and note that with the call orientation, you’ll also need to activate one more pertinent permission before it’ll work).

Rotation makes it easy to create display-rotation exceptions for different types of states and events.JR Raphael, Foundry

Almost done! Now, for our grand finale, just find the line in that same area of Rotation’s settings that’s labeled “App orientation.” Flip the toggle next to that into the on position and tap the “Permission required” button beneath it to let Rotation know which app is in the foreground at any given moment and then be able to adjust your orientation accordingly.

The “App orientation” section is where Rotation’s true power comes into play.JR Raphael, Foundry

Finally, tap the “Configure” button, then go through the list of all your installed apps and tap any app where you want the rotation to be anything other than the default we set a moment ago. The icons to pick the app-by-app rotation behavior are a little confusing at first, but if you press and hold any of ’em, you’ll see a message letting you know what exactly it entails.

App by app, choice by choice: The power is in your hands.JR Raphael, Foundry

And that’s it! Rotation has some other options you might enjoy exploring (such as the ability to turn off the pop-up “toast” messages that inform you every single time your screen rotation rules change), but your basics are now in place and set up to work exactly the way you want.

And from this moment forward, you’ll never have to think about — or be annoyed by — your phone’s unpredictable screen rotating habits again.

Ahh…a welcome little quality-of-life upgrade, wouldn’t ya say?

Get six full days of advanced Android knowledge with my free Android Shortcut Supercourse. You’ll learn tons of time-saving, sanity-enhancing tricks!