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Large screen orientation and resizability restrictions ignored on Android 17

For apps targeting Android 17 or higher, orientation, resizability, and aspect ratio restrictions no longer apply on large displays (widths 600dp or larger).

Summary

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For apps targeting Android 17 or higher, orientation, resizability, and aspect ratio restrictions no longer apply on displays with width 600dp or greater. This means that SystemChrome.setPreferredOrientations is ignored on these devices.

Background

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Android is shifting toward a model where apps are expected to adapt to various orientations, display sizes, and aspect ratios. Restrictions like fixed orientation or limited resizability hinder app adaptability. See Android 17 behavior changes for more details.

In Android 16, this behavior was introduced as a default but allowed apps to temporarily opt out using the PROPERTY_COMPAT_ALLOW_RESTRICTED_RESIZABILITY manifest property. Android 17 removes this opt-out.

Description of change

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If you rely on SystemChrome.setPreferredOrientations to lock your app to a specific orientation, it is ignored on large screens (widths 600dp and larger) if your app targets Android 17 or higher. If your app supports Android 16 and you did not opt out of this behavior, then it behaves the same on Android 17.

If your app relies on locking orientation, make your app adaptive to support different screen sizes and orientations. See the guidance for how to do this for large screens in Adaptive and responsive UI.

References

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