How to Disable Orientation Change on Android

How do I disable orientation change on Android?

Update April 2013: Don't do this. It wasn't a good idea in 2009 when I first answered the question and it really isn't a good idea now. See this answer by hackbod for reasons:

Avoid reloading activity with asynctask on orientation change in android

Add android:configChanges="keyboardHidden|orientation" to your AndroidManifest.xml. This tells the system what configuration changes you are going to handle yourself - in this case by doing nothing.

<activity android:name="MainActivity"
     android:screenOrientation="portrait"
     android:configChanges="keyboardHidden|orientation">

See Developer reference configChanges for more details.

However, your application can be interrupted at any time, e.g. by a phone call, so you really should add code to save the state of your application when it is paused.

Update: As of Android 3.2, you also need to add "screenSize":

<activity
    android:name="MainActivity"
    android:screenOrientation="portrait"
    android:configChanges="keyboardHidden|orientation|screenSize">

From Developer guide Handling the Configuration Change Yourself

Caution: Beginning with Android 3.2 (API level 13), the "screen size"
also changes when the device switches between portrait and landscape
orientation. Thus, if you want to prevent runtime restarts due to
orientation change when developing for API level 13 or higher (as
declared by the minSdkVersion and targetSdkVersion attributes), you
must include the "screenSize" value in addition to the "orientation"
value. That is, you must declare
android:configChanges="orientation|screenSize". However, if your
application targets API level 12 or lower, then your activity always
handles this configuration change itself (this configuration change
does not restart your activity, even when running on an Android 3.2 or
higher device).

How can I disable landscape mode in Android?

Add android:screenOrientation="portrait" to the activity in the AndroidManifest.xml. For example:

<activity android:name=".SomeActivity"
          android:label="@string/app_name"
          android:screenOrientation="portrait" />

Since this has become a super-popular answer, I feel very guilty as forcing portrait is rarely the right solution to the problems it's frequently applied to.

The major caveats with forced portrait:

• This does not absolve you of having to think about activity
  lifecycle events or properly saving/restoring state. There are plenty of
  things besides app rotation that can trigger an activity
  destruction/recreation, including unavoidable things like multitasking. There are no shortcuts; learn to use bundles and retainInstance fragments.
• Keep in mind that unlike the fairly uniform iPhone experience, there are some devices where portrait is not the clearly popular orientation. When users are on devices with hardware keyboards or game pads a la the Nvidia Shield, on Chromebooks, on foldables, or on Samsung DeX, forcing portrait can make your app experience either limiting or a giant usability hassle. If your app doesn't have a strong UX argument that would lead to a negative experience for supporting other orientations, you should probably not force landscape. I'm talking about things like "this is a cash register app for one specific model of tablet always used in a fixed hardware dock."

So most apps should just let the phone sensors, software, and physical configuration make their own decision about how the user wants to interact with your app. A few cases you may still want to think about, though, if you're not happy with the default behavior of sensor orientation in your use case:

• If your main concern is accidental orientation changes mid-activity that you think the device's sensors and software won't cope with well (for example, in a tilt-based game) consider supporting landscape and portrait, but using nosensor for the orientation. This forces landscape on most tablets and portrait on most phones, but I still wouldn't recommend this for most "normal" apps (some users just like to type in the landscape softkeyboard on their phones, and many tablet users read in portrait - and you should let them).
• If you still need to force portrait for some reason, sensorPortrait may be better than portrait for Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and later; this allows for upside-down portrait, which is quite common in tablet usage.

Android: Temporarily disable orientation changes in an Activity

As explained by Chris in his self-answer, calling

setRequestedOrientation(ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_NOSENSOR);

and then

setRequestedOrientation(ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_SENSOR);

really works like charm... on real devices !

Don't think that it's broken when testing on the emulator, the ctrl+F11 shortcut ALWAYS change the screen orientation, without emulating sensors moves.

EDIT: this was not the best possible answer. As explained in the comments, there are issues with this method. The real answer is here.

How to enable/disable orientation change only for my app?

To temporally disable orientation changes in an Activity call this:

setRequestedOrientation(ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_NOSENSOR);

and then to re-enable orientation changes call:

setRequestedOrientation(ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_SENSOR);

Prevent screen rotation on Android

Add

android:screenOrientation="portrait" 

or

 android:screenOrientation="landscape" 

to the <activity> element/s in
the manifest and you're done.

Disable the orientation change

try this in your code...

if(getResources().getConfiguration().orientation == Configuration.ORIENTATION_LANDSCAPE)
    {
        setRequestedOrientation(ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_LANDSCAPE);
    }
    else
    {
        setRequestedOrientation(ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_PORTRAIT);
    }

get the orientation in oncreate and set that orientation for that activity

Android: Prevent Orientation to change programmatically

I got it to work properly in all cases now.

To fix the screen:

if (getWindowManager().getDefaultDisplay().getRotation()== Surface.ROTATION_0)
    setRequestedOrientation(ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_PORTRAIT);
if (getWindowManager().getDefaultDisplay().getRotation()== Surface.ROTATION_90)
    setRequestedOrientation(ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_LANDSCAPE);
if (getWindowManager().getDefaultDisplay().getRotation()== Surface.ROTATION_270)
    setRequestedOrientation(ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_REVERSE_LANDSCAPE);

and then to allow rotations again:

setRequestedOrientation(ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_UNSPECIFIED);

Oim~

How to disable orientation changes for main activity?

Add this to the MainActivity in AndroidManifest.xml:

<activity
...
android:screenOrientation="landscape"
... >
</activity>

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