Kiss: Landscape mode

[ColonelPhantom]

Currently KISS launcher doesnt support landscape mode, which is annoying when I'm doing things in landscape and want to open another app. I understand landscape is suboptimal because of a lack of vertical screen space, but I still think it will be a useful addition.

[hamburger1984]

Are you sure it doesn't support landscape? There's a setting "Force portrait mode". If this setting is off, KISS should rotate.

[ColonelPhantom]

Oops, you're right. I'd think it'd be smarter to have it off by default though.

[ntninja]

I have it off by default too, but I think either way people will complain about _KISS_ not rotating the way _they_ think it should. Since there is no telemetry it's hard to tell what people in the wild actually use (and even if there were, it's hard to estimate the _default-bias_ of such an option, btw).

Maybe we should do a quick non-representative survey about what people around here (ie: devs) actually use? In the end, I think there no "right" answer to this question through.

[ntninja]

Actually I've seen this (imho somewhat pointless) Google-search app on some Android phones some time ago. I don't think I've ever had it, but if somebody with a more recent phone could check whether that thing rotates (since iirc it was somewhat similar to _KISS_), that could give us a cue as to what platform developers think is the right answer to this question.

[hamburger1984]

@alexander255 if you're referring to the Google app - yes, it does rotate.

Another thought on this: At least for me (cyanogenmod) there's the option to disable rotation for the device per se. A quick search didn't reveal whether this setting can be detected from an app. So if we could detect this, maybe this would be a good default? Disable rotation for users who disabled it for the device, enable for others?

Or we just do the vote :-)

[ntninja]

@hamburger1984 That looks like a much more functional version of what I had in mind so it's probably the successor of the app I was talking about. Thanks for checking!

Regarding the global rotation look: Not only can it be read from an app, it can even be written to if sufficient permissions are available. In fact you can look at an example of this right here. :wink:
I do not like the idea of force-rotating to portrait mode whenever auto-rotation is enabled: It just fits the description of "unexpected behaviour" way too well…

My opinion on this: Generally users will know best which (physical) way is the most comfortable to handle their device in, and we shouldn't override this unless there is very good reason for this. Since KISS Launcher remains fully functional in landscape mode, such reason does not IMHO exist however.
TL;DR: Dump _Force portrait_-mode or at least disable it by default.

[Neamar]

Hi there,

I have to agree with @alexander255.

At some point in the past, it was hard to access the portrait lock option. Starting with Android L, it's now very easy to access from the settings pane in notifications, and I see no reason to provide the option in KISS anymore -- assume the user knows what he wants.

In my case, I'm always locked to portrait anyway, so this won't be a big change for me.
I think the reason for the toggle was that most launchers were not rotating, but some people wanted a landscape version -- in the end, you just can't please everyone, so let's remove the feature and follow the system defined constraints.

Anyone wanna send a PR? Otherwise, I might be able to do it at some point later on.