Device orientation events

Secure context: This feature is available only in secure contexts (HTTPS), in some or all supporting browsers.

Device orientation events are events that allow you to detect a device's physical orientation, as well as allowing you to detect the device's motion.

Concepts and usage

Mobile devices commonly have sensors such as gyroscopes, compasses, and accelerometers that can enable applications running on the device to detect the device's orientation and motion.

The device orientation events enable you to write web applications that can change their behavior based on the orientation of the user's device, and that can react when the user moves their device.

Some typical features for which you might want to use the device orientation events include:

Some user agents require explicit permission before providing access to sensor data. In those environments, DeviceMotionEvent.requestPermission() and DeviceOrientationEvent.requestPermission() can be used to request this permission from a transient user activation such as a button click. See Requesting permission for more details.

Note: This API is widely supported on mobile browsers. While some desktop-only browsers may have limitations due to hardware differences, these constraints are rarely significant given the API's primary usage on sensor-equipped devices.

Interfaces

DeviceMotionEvent

Represents changes in the acceleration of a device, as well as the rotation rate.

DeviceMotionEventAcceleration

Represents the amount of acceleration the device is experiencing along all three axes

DeviceMotionEventRotationRate

Represents the rate at which the device is rotating around all three axes.

DeviceOrientationEvent

Represents changes in the physical orientation of a device.

Extensions to other interfaces

devicemotion event

Fired at a regular interval to indicate the amount of physical force of acceleration the device is receiving at that time, and the rate of rotation of the device.

deviceorientation event

Fired when fresh data is available from the device about the current orientation of the device as compared to the Earth coordinate frame.

deviceorientationabsolute event

Fired when absolute device orientation changes.

Specifications

Browser compatibility

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See also