During this period when the COVID-19 coronavirus is dictating social distancing to prevent community spread, one service that has being used more often is Facebook Live.

Facebook Live is a great way to stream updates to family and friends via your Facebook profile. It is directly integrated into the Facebook app on iOS and Android and just takes a few steps to get it all up and running.

So when I was approached to assist with the live streaming of Masses from my home parish, Facebook Live was an easy choice because it was already well establish within our community and an easy way for most to gain access to the live feeds.

However, I ran into an issue that stumped me for a couple of days. I am an Android user these days, so the iPhone/iOS platform is not my forte. We were using an iPhone6 for the live stream because it had a headphone jack unlike my OnePlus Pro 7T 5G McClaren. That headphone jack allows me to use a lavalier microphone with a 20 foot cord to gain great sound versus using the iPhones microphone from afar.

So day one of live streaming, I tried to turn the iPhone to landscape after starting the Facebook Live stream in portrait mode and that is apparently a huge no-go on Facebook Live with an iPhone. So we finished that first live stream in portrait mode and off I went to find a solution for sideways video on Facebook Live from an iPhone.

Two days of searching left me pretty blank with most advice stating to just turn the phone to landscape mode once you are on the broadcast page for Facebook Live on the iPhone. So the next morning, I set up the Facebook Live stream on the iPhone and then, before starting the broadcast, I turned the phone to landscape mode and the view changed to landscape!

I had solved the issue, so I thought, and we started the live stream. About 5 minutes into the live stream, I began to see comments that the video on Facebook Live was sideways. I brought up the live stream on my own phone and it was indeed going out sideways. I couldn’t disrupt the live stream at this point so we let it finish. After returning home, I downloaded the sideways video, used the Microsoft Photos video editing capability to rotate the video 90 degrees and saved a new copy. I then uploaded the correctly oriented video back to our church’s Facebook page and went in search for another possible solution.

After additional searching, I came across this video from The Rich Mompreneur that finally revealed the simple solution to this dilemma.

It is one setting called Display View that has to be changed to broadcast Facebook Live video in landscape mode from some iPhones.

Here is how you do it:

1. Open General Settings and select Display & Brightness.

2. Scroll down to the bottom of the Display & Brightness settings page and find Display Zoom – View.

3. On the Display Zoom options page, make sure Standard is selected.

You can now go back to Facebook Live and turn your phone into landscape mode and actually broadcast to Facebook Live in landscape mode after making this change!

Note: Display Zoom is a feature that makes the icons and texts on your iPhone screen larger. Plus, it apparently prevents the broadcasting of landscape mode videos on Facebook Live.

Hat Tip: Thanks to my iPhone bearing friend Freddy Fuentes from Twitter who provided this non-iPhone owning Windows geek some screenshots for this blog post!