Your iPhone can display the content on your screen in either the portrait or the landscape orientation. Which option it chooses is determined by how you are holding the device.
While this typically works quite well, and you can use it to make content easier to read, there are situations where the screen could be rotating when you don’t want it to. Fortunately you can prevent this from happening by enabling something called the portrait orientation lock. Our guide below will show you where to go to turn it on.
How to Enable Portrait Orientation Lock on an iPhone 7
The steps in this article were performed on an iPhone 7 Plus using iOS 12.1.4. Once you complete the steps in this guide your iPhone will no longer rotate to the landscape orientation automatically. However, certain apps can only be used in landscape, so they will typically open in that orientation regardless of whether portrait orientation lock is enable.
Step 1: Swipe up from the bottom of the screen to open the Control Center.
Step 2: Tap the Portrait Orientation Lock button.
You can tell that the portrait orientation lock is enabled when you see the padlock at the top of the screen.
Would you like to be able to access the Control Center more easily? Find out how to enable the Control Center on the lock screen and gain access to that menu even when the device is locked.
Matthew Burleigh has been a freelance writer since the early 2000s. You can find his writing all over the Web, where his content has collectively been read millions of times.
Matthew received his Master’s degree in Computer Science, then spent over a decade as an IT consultant for small businesses before focusing on writing and website creation.
The topics he covers for MasterYourTech.com include iPhones, Microsoft Office, and Google Apps.
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