How do you force an orientation change in an Android Instrumentation test?

You do not actually have to use Robotium for this at all. In fact, if you view the source of Robotium all it is doing when you call

solo.setActivityOrientation(Solo.LANDSCAPE);

is

myActivity = this.getActivity(); // In your setUp method()...myActivity.setRequestedOrientation(ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_LANDSCAPE);

As AndrewKS wrote you can use

getActivity().setRequestedOrientation(ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_LANDSCAPE);assertTrue(...);

to request an orientation change. But the rotation itself is executed asynchronous. To really test the state after the orientation change you need to wait a short time after the request:

getActivity().setRequestedOrientation(ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_LANDSCAPE);Thread.sleep(50); // depends on performance of the testing device/emulatorassertTrue(...);

Use Robotium for it.There is a class called Solo, using which you can change orientation by just calling a method:

solo.setActivityOrientation(Solo.LANDSCAPE);

That's it! Your orientation would get changed.You can google Robotium and obtain its jar and add it to your Test project. The Robotium site also gives an example Test project on Android's Notepad App (which is available as a sample project with Android SDK) which shows how powerful it is and how easily it could be used.