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How to Rotate a Photo on iPhone

The Photos app turns a picture in a few taps. The harder case is a photo that looks fine on the phone and arrives sideways somewhere else.

Flat vector illustration in plum and burgundy tones of a living room in the evening: two hands hold a phone sideways in the foreground, with a coffee table, mug, picture frame and loose photos behind it, and a sofa, bookshelf, dusk window, wall clock and a floor lamp glowing coral.

To rotate a photo on iPhone, open it in the Photos app, tap Edit, tap the Crop button, then tap Rotate until the picture is the right way up, and tap Done. Each tap turns it 90 degrees. If the photo looks right on your phone but shows up sideways after you upload it, rotate a copy with Rotate Image in your browser instead. It saves a new file with the pixels upright, and nothing is uploaded.

How to rotate a photo in the Photos app

These steps come from Apple's iPhone User Guide page Crop, rotate, flip, or straighten photos and videos on iPhone, which covers iOS 18, 26, and 27:

  1. Open the Photos app and tap the photo.
  2. Tap the Edit button.
  3. Tap the Crop button.
  4. Tap Rotate. Each tap turns the image 90 degrees, so keep tapping until it's upright.
  5. Tap Done to save. To back out instead, tap Cancel, then Discard Changes.

The same screen has a Flip button, which mirrors the image horizontally. That's the fix for a backwards selfie, not a sideways one.

How to undo a rotation

Apple's guide says a saved edit can still be undone: open the photo, tap Edit, then tap Revert. If you use iCloud Photos, Apple notes that edits are saved across all your devices, so a rotation made on your iPhone carries over to your other devices using iCloud Photos.

Upright on your iPhone, sideways everywhere else

This case confuses people because the Photos app has nothing to fix: the picture already looks correct. The usual cause is an orientation tag. Cameras often store the pixels the way the sensor captured them and add a note in the file's metadata saying which way to display them. Your phone reads the note. Some upload forms, older programs, and image pipelines ignore it and show the raw pixels, sideways. Our guide to rotating and flipping images explains the tag, and what EXIF data is covers the rest of that metadata.

The dependable fix is a copy whose pixels are already upright, so there's no note left to ignore.

Why a photo can look upright on an iPhone and sideways after upload On the left, the original photo file holds sideways pixels plus an orientation note. An iPhone reads the note and shows the photo upright; a site that ignores the note shows it sideways. On the right, after Rotate Image, the file holds upright pixels with no orientation note, so it shows upright everywhere. Original file sideways pixels + orientation note iPhone reads the note: upright Site ignores it: sideways After Rotate Image upright pixels, no orientation note Upright everywhere

How to rotate a photo on iPhone with Rotate Image

  1. Open Rotate Image in Safari and tap the drop area to choose one photo or several.
  2. Check the preview. It shows the photo the way your browser displays it, with any orientation note already applied, and your turn is added on top of that.
  3. Pick 90, 180, or 270 from "Rotate by". The turn is clockwise, and the preview turns as you choose.
  4. Run it and download. Several photos come back together in one zip.

If the preview is already upright, there's no "0" option to choose. Re-save the JPG with JPG to PNG instead: it redraws the photo the way the browser shows it, so it also writes upright pixels with no orientation note.

Two things about the file Rotate Image gives back. It's a PNG with no metadata, so there's no tag for another site to misread. And it keeps your original file name, so IMG_1234.JPG comes back under that name while holding PNG data, usually at a larger size than the JPG. If a form insists on a real JPG, run the result through PNG to JPG.

FAQ

Can I rotate several iPhone photos at once?
Apple's rotate steps work on one open photo at a time. Rotate Image takes up to 50 files and turns them all by the same amount.

Can I straighten a slightly tilted photo?
Yes, in Photos. Apple's guide describes a straighten slider in the same editing tools. Rotate Image turns only in 90-degree steps.

Does rotating lower the quality?
A 90-degree turn moves pixels without resampling them, and Rotate Image saves a lossless PNG, so that step loses nothing.

Try it yourself

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