Just the other day, we put out our top features of the second iteration of the Android M Developer Preview. It included an updated System UI tuner, battery percentage, and the ability to hide status bar icons. Well, we’ve found another neat feature. Android M finally allows for home screen rotation to landscape.
In order to do so, you have to open up the Google App, or swipe over to your Google Now page. Once there, swipe out from the left and open up the settings. Right on the first page of the settings their is a Home screen tab, and there is a toggle to ‘allow rotation’. This is something that has been missing on the Google Launcher.
The landscape screen has a slightly different layout than the portrait screen. The prevalent Google search bar that is usually placed at the top of the screen has been replaced by a more subtle Google ‘g’ and a microphone. I kind of like the more subtle approach with the microphone and ‘g’ off to the side as it opens up the wallpaper. Not only that, but the app icons appear smaller than when in portrait. I prefer this and wish this would be the default size on the Nexus 6. The current icons seem rather large when comparing it to other QHD devices.
As you can tell from the image above, the “OK Google” prompt takes up much more of the screen in landscape mode.
Below you can see Google Now and the app drawer in landscape mode. Google Now is still the same proportion when rotated. The app drawer in the landscape mode has a grid size of 5×3 versus the portrait grid size of 4×6. They did a good job of leaving some open space to not make it look too cluttered.
So, what are your thoughts of Google adding home screen rotation to the Android M Developer Preview 2? Are you a fan of this feature or is it something that is unnecessary? Be sure to let us know.
