Accidental Orientation Lock

[lawhawk]

When I got home yesterday my iPad 2 was locked to sideways orientation. No, it wasn't the mute switch. That feature was set to control mute and just in case I switched it back and forth and it made no difference (both the setting and the actual switch). I thought maybe the accelerometer or the gyro was defective. I went into settings and did a reset of all settings, and that fixed it.

Any idea what happened? Is there some orientation lock feature that you can activate accidentally?

 

[DontUnderstandMyIpad]

Yeah, you probably went a little overboard with doing a full reset.

The orientation lock is found in the multitaskbar. To access it, press the Home-key twice, then scroll to the left. The button to the left of the audio controls and the hardware switch swap positions. So if you set the hardware switch as a mute key, this button next to the audio controls becomes the orientation lock and vice versa.

 

[lawhawk]

That was probably it. I still have a hard time believing I did that by accident but that is the likeliest explanation.

 

[Matt978]

Just had the same issue....

...and I was nowhere near that panel to enable the lock. Easy enough as a user to fix but does sound like a confirmed bug.

 

[volcanopele]

I had a similar issue last night, with my ipad 2 being stuck in one orientation, despite the orientation lock switch not being on. I fixed it by turning the device completely off (holding down the wake/sleep button) and turning it back on.

 

[kctay]

The switch doesn't affect orientation anymore does it? Or did they change it back with 4.3?

 

[volcanopele]

You can choose whether you want it to be an orientation lock or mute switch. Since I can just mute it but pressing down on the nearby down volume button, I switched it to orientation lock.

 

[Doubleagle55]

When I got home yesterday my iPad 2 was locked to sideways orientation. No, it wasn't the mute switch. That feature was set to control mute and just in case I switched it back and forth and it made no difference (both the setting and the actual switch). I thought maybe the accelerometer or the gyro was defective. I went into settings and did a reset of all settings, and that fixed it.

Any idea what happened? Is there some orientation lock feature that you can activate accidentally?

Thanks for your post.

My iPad 2 did the same thing. One minute it working, next minute it's locked in landscape. I researched every thing I could think of, it appears that this is a very new glitch, the only option I thought I had was to take it to the Apple store. Then I found your post and after reset, it worked. Another gremlin that appeared yesterday was the wifi stopped working. So with the new found "reset" button I did the same thing but reset only the wifi. That fixed it.

 

[Tim SPRACKLEN]

Good to hear from you. You’ll find a whole bunch of iPad enthusiasts in this Forum who are only too willing to help other iPad owners and to hear of their experiences. Don’t be afraid to post any questions you may have or use the ‘Search’ button near the top of the Forum web page. I usually find I discover one new interesting and useful piece of information about my iPad every day - and often not even what I was looking for!!

There do seem to be a few issues that the reset fixes - though some of them appear to have been cured by a 'bug' fix update to iOS from 3.2 to 3.2.1, which you can download and install if these problems persist.

Hope to hear from you soon with your thoughts about the iPad.

Have fun and enjoy your iPad


If you don’t already have it you can download a copy of the iPad manual for free.

Apple - Support - Manuals

It’s free too.

Tim
Scotland

 

[SporkLover]

Glitch. Mine did it once too. I am hoping that it won't happen again with the 4.3.1 upgrade.

I remedied it with a power down/power up