The rotation lock feature on any iOS device can be extraordinarily useful, except when it’s not. More specifically, it tends to be less convenient when you watch videos because it tries to display the (usually widescreen) video in portrait orientation on your tall-displayed device, resulting in something like what you see above on the left.
Fortunately, those with jailbroken handsets can now spearhead this problem dead-on with a new free jailbreak tweak called Video Direction Control (iOS 11) by iOS developer rf00.
Just as the nomenclature suggests, Video Direction Control (iOS
11) lets iOS 11 users have more control over their video playback direction;
and yes, this encompasses displaying widescreen videos in landscape orientation
even when the rotation lock feature is toggled on.
Video Direction Control (iOS 11) adds a preference pane to
the Settings app where you can configure a couple of options to your liking:
Here, you can:
- Force videos to display in landscape orientation,
regardless of rotation lock status - Exclude vertical videos from the landscape
orientation rule
We particularly like that the developer included the latter option because some videos, especially those captured from smartphones by those with vertical video syndrome, wouldn’t display quite right in landscape orientation. That said, the tweak aims to be an all-in-one solution for a better video-viewing experience on the iOS platform, regardless of rotation lock preference.
We think that the Video Direction Control tweak is a great way to augment the iOS user experience, so it comes with our recommendation if you’re jailbroken on iOS 11. The tweak is available as a free download from Cydia’s BigBoss repository.
What are your thoughts about Video Direction Control? Drop
us a comment explaining yourself below.
