Auto Rotate Screen

Auto Rotate Screen

Auto Rotate Screen is a small free and open source utility by Yeo Kheng Meng that automatically rotates the Windows display when a ThinkPad laptop is physically turned. It reads the data of the ThinkPad Active Protection System (APS) accelerometer, the sensor that normally protects the hard disk from shocks, and switches the screen orientation accordingly. The author wrote it after adding a touchscreen to a non-tablet ThinkPad X60, because the official IBM/Lenovo rotation software works only on the tablet models.

Auto Rotate Screen lets ThinkPad owners use the laptop like a tablet by rotating the screen automatically when the device is turned.

Features

• Automatic screen rotation based on the ThinkPad APS sensor
• Separate settings for each of the four screen orientations
• Custom calibration of the exact laptop angle at which a rotation kicks in
• Individual orientations can be enabled or disabled
• Rotation through native Windows APIs or through keyboard shortcuts
• Adjustable sensor polling rate and screen rotation delay
• System tray icon for quick manual rotation, also on non-ThinkPad computers
• Runs on Windows XP and later, 32-bit and 64-bit

Auto Rotate Screen is aimed at convertible and touchscreen-modified ThinkPads, where it turns the laptop into a makeshift tablet for reading or drawing. The program starts in the background, watches the sensor and changes the orientation as soon as the laptop is held at the angle you calibrated, so there is no need to open the display settings every time.

On computers without the APS driver the automatic mode does not work, but the tray menu still serves as a quick shortcut for changing the screen orientation by hand. The program is written in C++ with the Qt framework, and its source code was first published on SourceForge and later mirrored on GitHub.

Auto Rotate Screen is no longer actively developed, and its last builds were released as beta versions. The author warns that problems such as a failure to rotate or a blank screen may occur on certain systems, so the tool is best suited to ThinkPad owners who are comfortable testing such utilities and can switch the orientation back manually if needed.