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Mac Screen Rotate: Turn Your MacBook Air Into an Ebook Reader

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MacBook Screen Orientation

Flip the MacBook Air Screen

Your MacBook Air can already read eBooks, but with a handy screen orientation app you can flip your MacBook Air on its side for a more booklike reading experience. The MacBook Air or MacBook Pro 13 may look awkward while held in portrait mode, but if you are sitting in a big comfy chair the portrait orientation beats trying to hold your Air at the normal angle for a long reading session.

To turn your MacBook Air into an eReader you’ll need to grab a Mac screen rotation app. There are several apps out there that will do this, but we are highlighting Mac Screen Rotate and MacFlip. Mac Screen Rotate uses a keyboard shortcut to rotate the screen on your MacBook while MacFlip uses the built-in motion sensor. Mac Screen Rotate is $4.99 with a free 7 day trial available and MacFlip is free. Both of these apps will not play nice with the new MacBook Pro models running Intel 3000 HD graphics.

You can also rotate the screen on your Mac by holding Option+Command while you click on System Preferences and then on Displays (Don’t let go until you click on Displays), but the mousepad is not oriented correctly.

We’ve picked Mac Screen Rotate for the ease of use and a personal preference for key combos. When you rotate your screen with Mac Screen Rotate the mousepad will also be properly oriented, allowing you to mouse as normal. When you rotate your screen the mousepad will also be oriented correctly, a feature you don’t get with the built-in rotation tools.

We launched Kindle for Mac and read through a few pages in portrait orientation without any issues. Rotating your screen is a handy trick to get more content on one page and works for eBooks and long webpages.

If you already have an iPad, Kindle, Tablet you won’t be switching over anytime soon, but if you are looking for an easy way to rotate your Mac screen and mousepad to read longer documents or catch up on an eBook, you should give MacFlip or Mac Screen Rotate a try.

Via UberGizmo

6 Comments

6 Comments

  1. paulk

    06/28/2011 at 9:50 pm

    On a Windows PC, just try Ctrl-Alt-<> , Ctrl-Alt-<> to get back to normal

  2. SamS

    06/30/2011 at 6:00 pm

    Read Right is a similar app for rotated reading, but it’s for PDFs only. However, it’s compatible with the graphics cards in the newest laptops:
    https://twilightedge.com/mac/readright/index.html

  3. Seotrx

    08/09/2011 at 6:38 am

    Awesome read. Thanks for sharing. Computer Engineering

  4. EdJenkins

    01/25/2012 at 4:08 am

    go into system preferences.. hold down alt + cmd while clicking ‘Displays’ then choose degree of rotation from the drop down menu that has now appeared.

    JOB DONE :)

  5. Qwe

    02/15/2012 at 4:35 am

    Thank you , this was useful

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