When holding a lift and pressing the keybind f the the port is changed between output and input but using the on screen ui for this doesnt change the port direction it looks like it flips the lift which effectively does nothing. This seems to work as expected for all other types of buldings from my testing.
Probably it just flips the lift along it’s already symmetrical axis. This does virtually nothing except perhaps to make it paste compatible by a blueprint/copy that contains the same or other lifts that have also been flipped.
Overall, it’s a nuisance that symmetrical buildings can be flipped at all, and that the flipped versions are not replaceable with their flipped counterpart, despite their function being identical.
The problem is even more expressed for rotationally symmetrical entities like connectors and balancers, where rotation also prevents replacement using copy/blueprint unless the alignment is the same (and there are 8 possible configurations).