Ever since the accelerometer was introduced in smartphones we have been tilting the display according to our preferences. While some of us find the auto-rotation a messy affair, the others (like me!) seem to have got the hang of it. Starting this year Google has introduced an important feature to its Google Now launcher and that is the ability to set the Android home screen in landscape mode.
By default, any Android phone displays the home screen in portrait orientation and while the portrait orientation suffices in most of the scenarios, some prefer the landscape mode to better accommodate shortcuts and widgets. Now with the new feature, you can set the home screen in landscape mode without the need for a third party app.
First things first, in order to set your home screen in landscape mode it is required that you set Google Now as the default launcher. Nexus devices usually come preselected with the default as the Google Now launcher while the other phones, especially those which come with a company overlay need to download Google Now and set it up as the default launcher.
Now all you need to do is long press anywhere on the screen and select” Setting” option, as shown in the screenshot above. Once inside the settings menu you will see “Allow rotation” toggle at the bottom. After enabling the toggle you will observe that the auto rotation will now be enabled on the home screen. If you desire to switch off the auto rotation for home screen just reverse the steps and it will be reverted to the default. One more thing, this feature seems to be currently working only on Android Marshmallow, we tried it on previous versions of Android but in vain.
