One UI 7 update preventing landscape mode on homescreen? Here's the potential culprit

I’ve been seeing a bunch of chatter online recently from Samsung users who’ve bagged the One UI 7 update. While new software updates are always exciting, they sometimes bring along a few quirks. One particular issue seems to be popping up quite a bit: the inability to get the home screen to rotate into landscape mode.

People are reporting that when they dive into their phone’s settings, specifically the Home screen settings, the option for “Rotate to landscape mode” is completely greyed out. They can’t toggle it on, no matter what they try.

Naturally, folks have checked the usual suspects – making sure auto-rotate is enabled in the quick settings panel, restarting their phones – but the home screen stubbornly stays locked in portrait view. It’s understandably causing some frustration. As user rhuzel24 highlighted on X, “Why my option of ‘Rotate to landscape mode’ is grayed out and I can’t click it? Does anyone know how to fix it? 😊 thanks.”

So, what’s going on? Looking through various forum threads and comments, I started noticing a common link. It seems the issue might not be with the core One UI 7 system itself, but rather an interaction with one of Samsung’s popular customization tools.

The potential culprit appears to be Samsung’s Good Lock app, and more specifically, the “Home Up” module within it. For those unfamiliar, Good Lock is an official Samsung application suite that lets users deeply customize various aspects of their Galaxy phone’s interface, and Home Up focuses on tweaking the home screen and app drawer.

Several users who encountered the greyed-out landscape toggle discovered a fix. User WillieGook on the Samsung Community forums initially reported the problem, but later updated with, “I got it!!!… I had Home-Up in Good Lock toggled on.” Turning off the Home Up module seemed to instantly restore the ability to enable landscape rotation for the home screen. Another user, Browny Beta, also noted, “The DIY Homescreen settings within the Good Lock Home Up module seem to be preventing landscape mode on my homescreen.”

Interestingly, it might not be affecting absolutely everyone using Home Up, suggesting it could be a specific bug triggered by certain configurations or settings within the module clashing with One UI 7. Some users mentioned that even with Home Up active, their landscape toggle remained functional. This points towards a compatibility bug rather than a deliberate feature removal.

So, if you’ve updated to One UI 7 and suddenly find your home screen stuck in portrait mode with the landscape option greyed out, try disabling the Home Up module in Good Lock. That seems to be the most reliable workaround for now. It’s likely something the Good Lock developers will need to address via an update soon.

In other news, another bug that seems to have cropped up following the One UI 7 update is one that results in the location sharing icon to persist in the status bar. You can read more about that here.