10.4: Enable screen rotation on some PowerBooks

May 20, '05 08:31:00AM

Contributed by: barr104

Tiger only hintMac OS 10.4 added a great feature to the Displays panel (for most users): the ability to rotate the display 90º, 180º, or 270º, which is great for the use of portrait monitors that can rotate, or just for fun.

For those of us with Powerbooks, this option is not available -- at least not at first. Obviously, this is turned off on PowerBooks for a reason: we have fixed displays, but it's still fun to play around with, and here's how. Open the System Preferences program, then hold down Option while clicking the Displays panel. When it opens, you'll see the Rotate button. You now have the ability to rotate your display! Have fun ... but if you only have a trackpad, it can get tricky to navigate.

[robg adds: This trick works only with ATI-equipped PowerBooks, so the 12" model (along with some older PowerBooks, I think) won't be able to use it. Note too, that this was mentioned in the comments to this hint, but I felt it was worth calling it out specifically regarding PowerBooks.]

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Mac OS X Hints
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