Hand-washing feature Wishy-washy?

Software
1

I’ve been experimenting with the new hand-washing feature. I’m finding it wishy-washy. It activates sometimes, not other times. Sometimes it activates halfway through the handwashing process. Is anyone else experiencing similar behavior or has your experience been better than mine? It’s a neat feature under our current circumstances but it doesn’t seem very reliable.

2

It’s been fairly reliable for me thus far.

Sometimes there to be appears to be a delay in activation, but when that happens, the time is still correct. That is, the watch might wait 5 seconds to alert me, but then it only shows 15 seconds remaining.

3 Likes
3

I’ve had that happen as well but several times it never activated at al. It seems to require my watch to be very close to the faucet, closer than It is normally when I wash my hands.

4

I’ve thought this was a pretty ridiculous feature since I first heard about it. If someone needs a watch to tell them to wash their hands for 20 seconds, they got much bigger problems than dirty hands.

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5

I’m finding it wishy-washy.

I see what you did there :wink:

I’m going to say it gets it correct 8 times out of 10 for me. I too see the behaviour where I don’t get notified of anything but then, after maybe 5 seconds, I get a countdown with 15 seconds left. I almost wonder whether the idea is that it starts silently, and only alerts you when it thinks you may have stopped washing after less than 20 seconds?

6

I love this feature and I don’t mind admitting it in public :smirk:.

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7

The feature’s worked well for me. No false positives so far, which was a common complaint during the beta. It’s been pretty reliable at activating when I’m washing my hands.

The only issue I have is that the haptic when it gets to 20 seconds isn’t very prominent. I don’t always notice it when I’m moving my hands around. Part of this may be down to having a stainless steel watch, since the greater weight makes all haptics less prominent, but it would still be nice if they had a longer more prominent haptic.

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8

It’s been working great for me, it recognises immediately every time I wash. I also like the fact it reminds me when I arrive home.

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9

I have found this feature to be very reliable. It might sound cheesy and funny, but it works if you do it the way Apple (health guidelines) thinks it is correct to wash your hands:

The link to the Macstories article is pointing directly to the section that deals with washing your hands

The thing is that the counter really measures the time when you actually do the scrubbing with soap.

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10

I like it. For me it activates always when I’m hand washing, but also if I’m holding a small object near water and washing it too. No big deal, just ignore the false positives.

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11

I like the concept - but it seems to cause big battery drain on my series 5 and also as a household without a dishwasher it triggers every time I do the washing up.
Does every house in the US have a dishwasher?!

12

No, we haven’t had an automatic dishwasher for over 20 years. OTOH we have 2 perfectly good dishwashers, me and my husband. :laughing:

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13

@OogieM aside, most homes in the U.S. have dishwashers.

14

I have an aluminum watch and the Haptic Touch is not prominent while in the handwashing mode. Haptic Touch works fine otherwise.

15

I’m not sure where they got the data but still interesting.

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16

29 days after writing that “I have found this feature to be very reliable”, this feature does not work for me any longer.

Sometimes, it does. But most of the times not. What did I change? Nothing. I blame watchOS 7.01 or 7.02 - or it is something on the server backend. And yes, it really had been working reliably for me back in September. :blush:

17

I’ll be honest I find washing my hands for 20 seconds to be far longer than I normally would, so I really like the feature.

It doesn’t work reliably, but is a good enough reminder when it does.

18

I got to thinking about the irony of using this app. There’s a good chance you (the general “you”) have an app on your phone that helps you to learn to be “mindful.” Then you have an app on your watch that takes care of counting up to 20 so you don’t have to think about washing your hands. :man_shrugging:

19

The one appliance I couldn’t live without. I, for one, think handwashing dishes is a waste of time. I’d rather buy a box of paper plates than washing the dishes by hand.