3 Ways to Disable Automatic Screen Rotation in Windows 11

Quick Overview of Automatic Screen Rotation

Automatic Screen Rotation is a common feature of devices with screens such as mobile phones and laptops. If your device is equipped with a gyroscope sensor and accelerometer, Windows 11 can rotate the screen to portrait or landscape mode to suit the content you are viewing.

In most cases, automatic screen rotation is very convenient. For instance, when you are watching a video or reading a book, the landscape mode can bring you a better experience. If you are a programmer and have an external monitor, the portrait mode can improve the efficiency of viewing code.

However, sometimes it may interfere with your viewing experience. Therefore, you want to turn it off. This article will introduce three ways to disable automatic screen rotation in Windows 11.

How to Turn off Automatic Screen Rotation in Windows 11

With automatic screen rotation feature, your device can automatically rotate the desktop to landscape or portrait mode according to your movement. If your device does not support automatic screen rotation, you will not see the methods discussed below.

Way 1: Disable Automatic Screen Rotation via Windows Settings

1. Press Windows + I to open Windows Settings.
2. Select System on the Settings homepage. And then click on Display.

Tip: You can also open Display by this way

☞ Right-click anywhere in Windows 11 Desktop, then select Display Settings.

3. Under the Scale & layout section, turn the Rotation lock option on.

Note✍: If Windows 11 Rotation lock is grayed out or missing, please change the Display orientation to Portrait mode. Then, after rotating your device, the Rotation lock should be available again.

Way 2: Disable Automatic Screen Rotation via Quick Settings

Windows 11 includes a handy new “Quick Settings” menu that replaces the functionality found in Action Center on Windows 10. When using a PC, you sometimes need to change settings quickly, but you may not want to flip through the menu or the full Windows settings application to change them. In this case, Quick Settings in Windows 11 are exactly what you need.

1. To open Quick Settings, click a set of status icons (Wi-Fi, speaker, and battery in our example) in the lower-right corner of the screen or press Windows + A.

2. Click the Rotation lock button.

Note✍: If you don’t see the Rotation lock button, you can click the pen icon in the lower right corner to add the Rotation lock as quick settings or click the gear icon to check all settings.

Way 3: Disable Automatic Screen Rotation via Registry Editor

The Windows Registry Editor (regedit) is a database that stores a wide variety of configuration settings. It allows authorized users to view the Windows registry and make changes. If the above two methods do not solve your problem, you can use Registry Editor to make some changes to prevent your screen from rotating automatically.

It is worth noting that incorrectly modifying the registry may cause irreversible damage to your operating system. Therefore, it is recommended to create a system image backup before making any changes. The next part introduces a reliable backup method. If you want to use this way to turn off automatic screen rotation in Windows 11, please move to the next part to back up the system before making changes in the Registry.

Steps to disable automatic screen rotation via Registry Editor are as follows:

1. Press Windows + R or right-click Windows and select Run to open the Run dialog box.
2. Type “regedit” and then click OK or press Enter.

3. Navigate to the following path:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AutoRotation

4. Double-click the Enable DWORD and set the value data to 0. Then click OK.

5. After that, close Registry Editor and restart your device. Then the automatic screen rotation on Windows 11 will be turned off. If you want to open it, you can access the same DWORD value and restore its value data to 1.

Back up OS before Modifying Settings in Registry Editor

As we mentioned above, the Windows registry is a hierarchical database that contains all the configurations and settings Windows uses. If we modify the registry incorrectly, it may cause damage to our operating system, make it unstable or even inoperable. Therefore, it is of importance to create a system backup before making any changes in Registry Editor.

By the way, for a newly released system, errors, missing functions, and compatibility will inevitably occur in the early stages of use. In order to restore the system in time when an error occurs, you should create a system backup in advance.

Speaking of the best backup software, AOEMI Backupper is certainly at the top of the list. It is a full-featured backup software that can protect your data and system with the simplest operation. Most importantly, it is FREE.

✭ It is embedded with abundant features including backup, recovery, clone, and sync.
✭ It provides block level backup and file level backup. The former one can improve backup efficiency.
✭ It allows to schedule automatic backup to create set-and-forget tasks in daily, weekly, or monthly mode.
✭ It supports various backup destinations, such as, external hard drive, USB drive, SSD, network drive, cloud storage (eg: Google Drive), SD card, and so on.

Please download the freeware to have a try right now!

Here are the detailed steps about how to back up the system:

Step 1. Install AOMEI Backupper and launch it.

Step 2. On the left panel of this program, click Backup and then select System Backup.

Tips✍:
✪ Disk backup: Create a disk image of the specified hard disk, including the operating system, installed program, personal data etc.
✪ File Backup: Backup files to different storages, which will not occupy too much disk space.
✪ Partition Backup: Back up partitions you select, you can select D:drive, E:drive, F:drive to be backed up, etc.

Step 3. You can use the "Task Name" to name the backup as needed to help you distinguish it from other backups. The program will select the system and boot partitions by default as the source destination. And then choose a destination path to save the system backup.

Step 4. (optional) Click Options, Schedule or Scheme to select one or more settings you like.

❆ Options: You can write a note for the backup. And if you want to encrypt your backups, please consider upgrading to higher editions.

❆ Schedule: You can choose the backup frequency here, including daily/weekly/monthly/USB plug in/Event triggers, the last two are available in professional edition. This feature helps you continuously backup your system and ensures you can restore your computer always with the latest backup.

❆ Scheme (available after upgrade): This feature is used to manage backup disk space and delete old backups at a specific role. AOMEI Backupper offers 5 different backup strategies according to different users' needs.

Step 5. Click Start Backup to begin system backup in Windows 11.

Summary

After reading this article, you may know how to disable automatic screen rotation in Windows 11. The first two methods are relatively simpler and have no effect on your computer. However, when you cannot turn off automatic screen rotation using the first two methods, you must use the third method, which may cause damage to your operating system.

As long as you use reliable backup software—AOMEI Backupper to back up the system, you can restore your system to its previous stable state in the event of an accident. If you have just replaced your old computer with a new computer, you can also use this software to move Windows 11 to the new computer without reinstalling it.