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GBM How To: Keyboard Shortcut to Quickly Change Screen Rotation

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Looking for a keyboard short-cut to quickly change screen rotation? Ctrl-Alt and any of the four arrow keys will set you free:

  • Ctrl+Alt+Arrow Up will rotate your screen up
  • Ctrl+Alt+Arrow Down will rotate your screen down
  • Ctrl+Alt+Arrow Right will rotate your screen right
  • Ctrl+Alt+Arrow Left will rotate your screen left

I’ve verified this to work in Windows Vista and Windows XP, whether a tablet pc or regular notebook. With a regular notebook there maybe some video card constraints. Update: HP’s tx series doesn’t seem to support this keyboard shortcut.

31 Comments

31 Comments

  1. Alan

    11/09/2008 at 11:51 am

    Doesn’t do anything on my HP TX2530EA, only pressing the screen rotate button (or manually picking an orientation from the Tablet control panel) seems to do it.

  2. Warner Crocker

    11/09/2008 at 12:03 pm

    Working on Vista on the Lenovo X200

  3. Stefan

    11/09/2008 at 12:07 pm

    and on the asus u1f…..

  4. Stuart

    11/09/2008 at 12:07 pm

    doesn’t work on a panasonic T5 with XP Tablet edition

  5. Stefan

    11/09/2008 at 12:11 pm

    but I forgot. The rotation does not save the desktop layout on turning!! It is sad if you have undocket gadgets

  6. Amitai Rosenberg

    11/09/2008 at 12:11 pm

    Works on Samsung Q1U XP

  7. HG

    11/09/2008 at 12:31 pm

    I use it on my Gigabyte M912, Kohjinsha SC3, and Fujitsu U810 running Vista. I also went and created a Penflick to rotate the screen so when I’m in tablet mode I can rotate it.

  8. Rob

    11/09/2008 at 12:44 pm

    great tip, HG – assigning a pen flick to kick off a rotation

  9. Carlos

    11/09/2008 at 1:00 pm

    Doesn’t work with my Tablet HP Tx2120us

    :(

    Any recomendation?

  10. Rob

    11/09/2008 at 1:10 pm

    I see a common thread amongst HP tx users….it could be the video card doesn’t support it.

  11. Frank

    11/09/2008 at 1:20 pm

    In the Intel Graphic Card properties window you can define these shortcuts. And the above mentioned shortcuts is the default setting. So it’s most likely that they only work with an Intel Graphics card. Other graphics card have other default settings, maybe. But who uses keyboard shortcuts on a tablet? :)

  12. Warner Crocker

    11/09/2008 at 1:33 pm

    Working on the HP 2730p.

  13. rocke86

    11/09/2008 at 2:00 pm

    I had a problem with this twice at the hospital where I worked in IT. I’d get a call that the screen was sideways. I googled, and told them the key combo to fix it. I guess it is bound to comeup every once and a while. Thank goodness sticky keys were disabled.

    I does only affect intel gpus, The key combo wouldn’t work on my workstation since it had a ati card and the software has a different shortcut combo.

  14. Mobileman

    11/09/2008 at 3:00 pm

    Works fine with the X60t.In a few days I will try it an Asus.
    Thanks for this tip.

  15. Joe

    11/09/2008 at 3:12 pm

    Sounds like an Intel video only shortcut. It seems the tx series which uses ATI graphics doesn’t work with it, nor does my XT, which also has ATI graphics.

  16. Rob

    11/09/2008 at 3:17 pm

    My mother’s toshiba laptop has ATI graphics and the keyboard shortcuts work on it….

  17. Ben

    11/09/2008 at 4:39 pm

    I have an x61t with vista and the “intel common user interface” (hkcmd, igfxtray, and igfxpers) disabled from starting up. These shortcuts don’t work for me.

  18. 64pilot

    11/09/2008 at 4:41 pm

    Works on a Hp TC4400. Dont know when this will be useful but now I know how it works. Sure Ill find somthing. Thanks.

  19. J Smith

    11/09/2008 at 6:19 pm

    This works on a ThinkPad X41.

    I feel rather stupid not having before known about these shortcut keys. Thank you for pointing them out.

  20. Ycery

    11/09/2008 at 9:27 pm

    I’m using iRotate with my HP tx2051, also works on a t60. Works like a charm and it’s free.

    https://www.entechtaiwan.com/util/irotate.shtm

    Ycery.

  21. loyukfai

    11/09/2008 at 11:59 pm

    It should be the Intel drivers…

    https://img139.imageshack.us/my.php?image=newpicturejv5.png

    Speaking of this, under Vista one may open applications on the Quick Launch bar by using “Windows key + 1/2/3/4/5…” Whereas the number represents the position of the shortcut in the bar.

  22. Dave P

    11/10/2008 at 11:11 am

    This doesn’t work on the OQO 02 either. Ctl-Alt-left/right arrow seems to be mapped to speaker volume and up/down arrow has no apparent effect.

  23. Andrew

    11/10/2008 at 9:53 pm

    Does not seem to be working on my Latitude XT

  24. Jan

    11/11/2008 at 5:38 am

    I think that it’s handled mostly by intel graphic cards software, therefore You musn’t untick its software from auto start in msconfig.
    I think that is this one “intel(R) common user interface” (it’s 3x there) or perhaps GzSnd (i think I memeber that one I unticked it and shortcut stopped working)

  25. Ali Arslan

    09/25/2012 at 1:48 am

    Thanks for sharing this valuable information =) It worked Windwos 7…

  26. kia kones

    10/16/2012 at 4:52 am

    yup, works on baseline lenovo laptop

  27. Amit Garg

    03/13/2013 at 6:17 am

    Thanks that really works for me… in XP only

  28. Imaan

    04/08/2013 at 11:33 pm

    awesome thanks!

  29. JP

    06/26/2013 at 5:33 pm

    Had great fun @ work changing peoples screens “sideways”

  30. Maso'd

    01/01/2014 at 9:30 pm

    thank you

  31. Gary Jones

    08/10/2015 at 3:55 am

    Just used this method on my Lenovo 10.1 Flex laptop which is on windows 10 and it worked fine. THANK-YOU !

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