Launching landscape app according to iOS human interface guidelines

Question

As per the iOS Human Interface Guidelines, when the device is held in portrait mode, a landscape app should always launch orientated with the home button on the right.

However, I cannot make the launch screen behave to match this expectation. So my best efforts will result in a vertical flip as the app transitions from launch screen to the app window.

I looked at some apps and not everyone honours this guideline, but others do, so this issue is definitely solvable. So the behaviour I'm looking for, is to have Landscape-Left orientation "temporarily disabled" during launch, if and only if we're in portrait mode.

Any help is appreciated!

Answer 1

I just discovered the solution: When a landscape-only app is launched in portrait mode, the orientation (i.e. whether it will be left or right) will be selected based on the ordering of entries under the UISupportedInterfaceOrientations node in the app plist file.

So the solution was the change item order from the xcode-generated

<key>UISupportedInterfaceOrientations~ipad</key>
<array>
    <string>UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeLeft</string>
    <string>UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight</string>
</array>

to

<key>UISupportedInterfaceOrientations~ipad</key>
<array>
    <string>UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight</string>
    <string>UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeLeft</string>
</array>