MacBook Pro – Guide to Screen Rotation on MacBook Air 2013

macbook proscreen

I refer to How to rotate screens separately, and it is not working for me. When I clicked Displays with the other two keys on the keyboard, nothing happened. So I wonder how to rotate the screen on my Macbook Air.

Best Answer

You can rotate your MacBook Air screen using the OS X system preferences. What you need to do is:

  • Launch System Preferences (first quit it if it’s already open)
  • Hold down Command Option and click on "Display"
  • Look for 'Rotation' on the right side of the Display window and take your pick

If System Preferences is already open then holding down Command+Option doesn’t seem to make the Rotatation menu appear. If you run into that, just quit out of System Prefs and relaunch it.

(found on OS X Daily and found here on AskDifferent)

EDIT:

Cave! I had serous troubles on my MacBook Pro retina. Do NOT try this method described above in Yosemite (and properbly newer systems as well)

Read this: I recently tried this trick again to rotate my screen and got stuck in a nasty situation. My screen is inverted and my 'Display' menu in System Preferences will not open, when trying to open the 'Display' preference pane it gives me the following error:

"Preferences Error Could not load Displays preference pane."

I have tried the following things to fix it, non of these work:

  • Removed ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systempreferences.plist and ~/LibraryApplication Support/Dock/desktoppicture.db, and rebooted.
  • Logged in as another user or as guest user.
  • repair permissions, gives the following warning:
    • User differs on on "private/var/db/displaypolicyd"; should be 0;user is 244
    • Group differs on on "private/var/db/displaypolicyd"; should be 0;user is 244
  • Installed the 'OSXUpdCombo10.10.3.pkg'
  • Re-installed 'OS X - Mavericks over my current system'
  • Manually removed the Display preference pane from /System/Library/PreferencePanes and installed the 'OSXUpdCombo10.10.3.pkg' after that.

Luckely I have an external display that does not go 'Australian' on me, but this is quite nasty. I am now preparing for a clean install of my system as I am out of further ideas.

EDIT 2: - Temp fix/hack. This will not fix the broken 'Displays' preference pane, but it will help you to leave 'Down Under' and zero out gravity. Rotate your screen using a third party app:

'Display Rotation Menu 1.2' display rotation

EDIT 3: Complete clean reinstall of the system 'fixed' the issue. I have only restored the non-admin users via TimeMachine.

Error message: Preferences Error

Related Question