Put fullscreen landscape videos in landscape regardless of how the device is initially held.

[schmitd]

Use Cases

Currently:

If I press the full screen button, a video with a wide aspect ratio will be letter-boxed until I physically rotate my screen. This feels very clunky and unresponsive, and makes it very frustrating or even confusing to use the app when auto rotate is disabled.

End goal:

When the user presses the fullscreen button: immediately respond to user intent by putting the video in the orientation twith the least letterboxing. Reduce further friction by allowing the user to physically "catch up" by rotating to that orientation.

Proposal

• A: By default, fullscreen will use landscape or portrait orientation based on aspect ratio
  • e.g. a video in 1280x720 should automatically become landscape when the fullscreen button is pressed.
  • Following the button press a timed "debounce" for system autorotate events can give the user time to manipulate the phone physically and press the rotate lock button (an arbitrary debounce seems like an accessibility issue.
• B: The same as "A" but lock the orientation until the user physically rotates the phone to match the fullscreen orientation, then if they physically rotate "out" of the fullscreen orientation afterwards, the autorotate events will process normally.
  • This is how the YT app functions on Android (i.e. it's what most users expect), but requires more complex logic for handing the autorotate events from the system.
• C: The same as "A", but autolock is immediately enabled, and the user must press the "exit fullscreen" button again or disable autolock (easy, but confusing).

Any of these proposals could be made an option, but the player options regarding rotation are already numerous and overwhelming. The UX should be opinionated towards the best general experience and this should be default behavior. "B" seems the most polished to me.

References

• Fullscreen Portrait Only on Vertical Videos #1305

[xephos1one]

Isn't "A" the current implementation?
I never had the problem you named and it straight goes to landscape when pressing the full screen button.
On which videos it is happening for you? What's you screens aspect ratio?

[Zvonimir-FUTO]

Could you also provide a version of your Grayjay application?

[schmitd]

Version 278

@xephos1one is right. I enabled vertical fullscreen in the settings at some point, thinking I needed it to view videos that were taller than they were wide without letterboxing. My bad! 😅

[Zvonimir-FUTO]

Then I presume your issue has been solved. Closing issue.