Prevent screen rotation on Android

Question

I have one of my activities which I would like to prevent from rotating because I'm starting an AsyncTask, and screen rotation makes it restart.

Is there a way to tell this activity "DO NOT ROTATE the screen even if the user is shaking his phone like mad"?

Answer 1

Add

android:screenOrientation="portrait"  

or

 android:screenOrientation="landscape"  

to the <activity> element/s in the manifest and you're done.

Answer 2

You can follow the logic below to prevent auto rotate screen while your AsyncTask is running:

1. Store your current screen orientation inside your activity using getRequestedOrientation().
2. Disable auto screen orientation using setRequestedOrientation(ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_NOSENSOR).
3. Run/execute your AsyncTask.
4. At the end of your AsyncTask restore your previous orientation status using setRequestedOrientation(oldOrientation).

Please note that there are several ways to access Activity (which runs on UI thread) properties inside an AsyncTask. You can implement your AsyncTask as an inner class or you can use message Handler that poke your Activiy class.