Turns out You Can Actually Play Pokémon GO in Landscape Mode on the iPhone, but You Shouldn’t

Pokémon GO‘s portrait-only presentation is fine for the most part, but for a game that tasks you with taking in your surroundings, it’s a bit of a limited way to look around a map. (It’s also terrible when you’re taking screenshots for work that need to be landscape-oriented, by the way.) There’s no officially supported landscape mode yet (and there probably won’t be), but there is a sneaky workaround you can use on iOS devices—no extra software required.

The trick is incredibly simple, but it’s also done by exploiting a circumstance that isn’t very likely to come up in normal play, which is probably why no one noticed it until recently. Of course, as all things are in 2016, the trick was discovered randomly by a redditor, but it absolutely does work—as confirmed by the above screenshot of my own game and the Tauros I’m not going to be able to catch right now because I’m supposed to be an adult with responsibilities.

Here’s how to try it for yourself (for iPhones—there’s a different method on Android): Turn your phone on its side while playing Pokémon GO. Tap the Poké Ball, and then tap the settings icon. In the settings menu, tap “Report high-priority issue,” and you’ll be brought out to your web browser to report an issue to Niantic. Keeping the phone sideways, exit to your home screen and reopen Pokémon GO, and it should switch to widescreen.

While in the unofficial landscape mode, the map has a slightly odd zoom effect that’s most noticeable when you turn it, but it definitely displays a much wider field of view than the portrait one. (You can see when looking at the icons along the bottom that the portrait screen isn’t just being stretched to landscape.) The menus, on the other hand, become pretty difficult to navigate, which is a definite downside—not to mention the fact that you basically can’t catch Pokémon while playing in this mode.

I tried to catch a Goldeen (for very important journalism reasons) while in landscape mode, but something about the change in camera angles made it pop up practically on top of me, which was disturbing in addition to making it difficult to catch—Poké Balls mostly bounced harmlessly off of its underside. AR mode was even worse, as the real world appeared flipped (turned) upside down, because I apparently chose the wrong side of the phone as “up” when I initiated the glitch. Whoops.

So, as nifty a trick as it is, having to quit out of the game and go back to normal presentation every time you want to catch a Pokémon is kind of a deal-breaker—especially if you have trouble logging back in, which is … not unheard of.

(via BGR, images via screenshot)

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