The iPhone natively displays your movies and shows in landscape view and you might think that there isn’t much you can do about it. Well, if you’d rather access your shows in portrait view like above, it’s actually possible with some simple tricks.
The first method, a trick of my own, doesn’t even require iTunes, here is the step by step walk through:
- Get on the iPod app
- Go in Playlist category
- Hit “On-the-go”
- If it’s not empty hit clear, then clear the playlist, back, and “on-the-go” again
- Now you’re making your playlist, hit the video category
- Pick your movie
- Hit done
- Hit your movie under the edit button
- Your movie will start in portrait view
It might sound complicated but the idea is simple and shouldn’t take more than a couple seconds.
Tuaw’s Sang Tang is reporting another neat trick, which might be simpler but requires iTunes and more planning:
Getting your iPhone to play a movie or TV show in portrait mode requires a simple change in the video’s tag, from TV Show or Movie to Podcast. (In iTunes) Simply right-click on the file and select “get info “(or you could use the Command-I shortcut).
Then, in the “Media Kind” section within the “Options” tab of the video, select Podcast. Now, the videos will show up in both the Podcasts and Videos section of the iPod portion on your iPhone.
This should also allow you to then access your videos in portrait view, from the podcast section.
Have any similar tricks of your own?
It’s not that hard to just rotate the iDevice.
Create a playlist in iTunes containing the videos. Sync to your iPhone. If you then go into that playlist and play the videos from there you can change to portrait.
Seriously, who wants to watch movies on their iPhone in potrait mode? is it only me or isn’t landscape mode alot better? Retorical question.
Yeah, I totally agree with you @iPhoneGlance. What’s the point?
this could turn out to be quite helpful for me…
since I have a condition that often makes it uncomfortable for me to hold my iPhone in landscape mode for a period of time; I have a little stand but it is not always accessible like when in the waiting room or something.
Anyhow, thanks for the tips.
I am off to try out the first one. Just seems simpler to me.
Darlene
Unfortunately using the On-The-Go playlist trick won’t work on a Touch (unless it’s jailbroken.) Apple inexplicably broke the iPod app into Music and Videos, so videos cannot be added to playlists at all. Even if you create a playlist in iTunes, any videos in it will not show up on the Touch. The podcast trick does work, however, on the Touch. Another nice feature of converting videos into podcasts is the handy 30 second rewind button; I wish that was available on regular videos and music tracks.