How to Turn Off Handwashing Reminders on Apple Watch
Have you washed your hands? Did you really wash your hands? Are you home! Maybe it’s time to wash your hands well. Do you think your hands are clean enough now? In short, this is iOS 14.
I don’t envy that Apple has introduced “time to wash” reminders for iPhone and Apple Watch owners. I mean, at the end of the day, we are in a pandemic. It would probably be a little better for society if we were all assigned to wash more than usual during the day.
However, my personal hygiene is pretty good and I definitely don’t need to be reminded every time I come home to wash my hands. I also tried the Apple Watch ‘countdown’ feature, which makes sure you wash your hands for at least 20 seconds. Maybe it’s just me, but mine always stopped after just a few seconds, making this feature moot.
To turn off these various sanitary reminders, you’ll want to start by opening the Watch app on your iPhone. Scroll down a bit until you see a new Hand Washing section that you can tap (among all your other “watch apps”) and tap on it. You will see a screen that looks like this:
Turn off Hand Wash Timer to turn off the countdown that appears whenever Apple Watch detects a wash. You should also see the Handwashing Reminders option below, which you’ll want to turn off if you don’t want the reminders to wash your hands whenever you come home from somewhere.
You won’t see Hand Wash Reminders unless you also enable Hand Wash Timer, which seems a little odd to me. I mean, maybe you want your wrist to be quick to remind you to wash your hands without holding your Apple Watch by the hand (metaphorically speaking) while you pour water on it. But this is how handwash notifications work now. I have not laid down the rules for cleanliness.
How to check your hand washing statistics
If you use this feature for some time, you can also check how well you are used to wash their hands. Open the Health app on your iPhone and click Browse, then search for Handwashing. Click on the results and you’ll get statistics on how you wash your hands, including the number of daily washes and the average time you spent soaking dirty hands infected with COVID-19.