How To Enable Horizontal View On Iphone

Rotate Home Screen of iPhone

One of the more interesting features that arrived with the larger screen iPhone Plus models is the ability to view the devices Home Screen, where app icons are shown, in a rotated sideways horizontal format. This places the Dock onto the side, and kind of resembles a tiny iPad. To rotate the iPhone Home Screen, you simply need to turn the iPhone into a horizontal position, and as long as Orientation Lock is not on, it will rotate. Usually.

Sometimes the Home Screen on iPhone Plus does not rotate while other app screens do rotate, however, but the reason for this is quite simple; it's the iPhones Display Zoom settings.

Why is My iPhone Plus Screen Not Rotating? Here's the Fix!

Basically, you have to enable home screen rotation on iPhone Plus including iPhone 7 Plus and iPhone 6 Plus by not using the Zoomed view:

Open the Settings app on the iPhone and head to "Display & Brightness"
Under the "Display Zoom" section, tap on "View"
Choose the "Standard" view, then choose "Set" and confirm the settings change
Return back to the Home Screen of the iPhone and rotate the device sideways into landscape mode to rotate the Home Screen

Standard View enables Home Screen rotation on iPhone

This relates to ALL iPhone Plus devices, including iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 6 Plus, and presumably any other iPhone Plus that has the capability of rotating the screen, whether iPhone 7S Plus and iPhone 8 Plus too.

Important: Always check to make sure Orientation Lock is not turned on, visible by a little lock icon with a arrow around it in the status bar. That setting will interfere with the ability for the screen to rotate in all views of iPhone, whether in specific apps or just the icon filled Home screen of the device.

Rotated Home Screen of iPhone

If you have the display set to "Standard" and the Orientation Lock turned off and the screen is still not rotating, try placing the iPhone into landscape mode and giving it a good shake, sometimes the accelerometer becomes unresponsive or less sensitive and this almost always resolves that issue.

Myself and many other users have a strong preference to use the Zoom View, it makes everything on the big screen appear larger and easier to read (that alone makes a very strong argument for picking iPhone Plus, though it will spoil you), but the Zoom view does not allow for Home Screen rotation. Thus, if you want to rotate the view where your icons display and have the iOS Dock on the left or right side of your iPhone screen, you must use the "Standard" view for the devices display. With the Home Screen rotating, you can think of the iPhone Plus as a smaller iPad, which also has the same rotation ability, except that the Dock gets rotated with it. Simple enough, right?