Over eight years, the Apple Watch has sensibly evolved—activity rings, rest-day pauses, Walkie Talkie, widget redesign—and become an indispensable daily companion. Yet its clever hand-washing feature from watchOS 7 is plagued by incessant false “loud environment” alerts from hand dryers and repeated dish-washing triggers that never get fixed. It’s baffling that a device capable of life-saving crash detection can’t handle drying your hands, making me suspect Apple’s engineers never actually wash theirs.
Most public restrooms have air dryers that blow air forcefully and loudly. And what happens every single time I use one? This annoying AF alert telling me “Loud Environment Detected” and imploring me to get to a quieter spot before I damage my hearing.
Air dryers are dirty AF, it is cleaner to wipe your hands on your pants.
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/the-dirty-truth-about-hand-dryers
Myth: Hand dryers help kill germs
Fact: Hand dryers can spread viruses and bacteria
Solution to the noise alert? Stop using air dryers.
I’m not that old, and have only seen a single, filthy example, but the older style of discontinued public washroom hand drying towels were disgusting in a really intense kind of way. It never got the opportunity to completely dry, and add to that situation that every single asshole who only rinsed his dickbeaters after shitting instead of washing them was griming it up instead of just drying their hands.
The towel is not a loop. When you pull down you get fresh towel off of a roll. The used towel goes onto a different roll and when the clean roll is used up they change it and wash the dirty one. They are geared together so the amount hanging down is pretty constant but sometimes they got out of sync and the “loop” was either huge or so tight you couldn’t really dry your hands.
And today you could build one that has like a micro washing machine / mangle / dryer combo integrated.
I really like the idea of that thing, but goddamn I can’t conceive of a way to actually make it sanitary.
Edit - derp
Not sure if you meant can or can’t but they’re meant to only be used one way, so alcohol or a bleach solution in the towel cylinders could keep it clean through it’s life.
“Clean” does not remove the physical particles of dirt and shit.
It might be sanitary, but Noone would trust it unless it self cleaned fully each use
It’s not a loop, there’s a fresh towel roll and a dirty towel take up roll and it only rolls on one direction. You changed it when the clean roll ran out and washed the dirty roll.
This! I have a couple brand new rolls from when a friends grandparents gestation closed.
They are about the size of industrial paper towel rolls, but make shitty rags unfortunately.
That’s the thing, you put the new roll at top and it collects in a spool on the bottom. Provided the new cylinder is sterile, you’re all good. The problem arise when it reaches the end of the spool and isn’t changed do people are using the same static towel, or people cheap out by trying to reuse the dirty ones
There were also ones that were a loop.
My personal experience begs to differ.
Absolutely refuse to use those filthy things. I use my shirt, pants or tp
Do people actually buy hand dryers to kill germs?
I usually see two types of businesses that buy them. A) businesses that think they’re helping the environment by producing less waste and b) businesses that are cheap/ lazy and like not having to buy paper towels.
My point was they spread germs, I quoted the first study I found. The myth did not quite fit with the op. But it is a Sunday and I was not going to do any more work.
Agreed!
“Loud environment detected”.
Well, because the air dryer is fucking loud! And even the ones that are not that loud, your watch is that close to it, so it will say it’s a loud environment. That’s what it does!
I wear hearing aids and air dryers annoy the hell out of me because they’re so loud. Almost as much as leaf blowers annoy me.
Hearing aids don’t have the ability to filter noises so it’s like plugging a microphone into headphones and trying to carry on conversations. Mine can now reduce loud noises a little bit so they don’t damage my already horrible hearing further but that wasn’t the case when I had them as a kid and air dryers started getting more popular, that shit hurt.
I have the AirPod pro. It has a feature called transparency, where it transfers the ambient sound into the ear, plus the music, so it should be like you aren’t using anything. The problem is, the frequencies are not the same. I start hearing louder noises in higher frequencies. I think I understand what you go through with the air dryer.
Yeah I have the AirPods Pro and have tried out the transparency feature, specifically because Apple has been floating the idea around that these could technically act as hearing aids and I’m looking for alternatives that might be cheaper now that I’m on disability.
It reminds me of when hearing aids first came out when I was a kid, only not quite as good. But you get the idea with the frequencies and also background noise. Go into a loud coffee shop with them on and try to carrying on a conversation with someone only using the transparency feature.
For someone with slightly declining hearing it might be ok. For me I have mild-to-moderate hearing loss and I have to use an actual hearing aid, not a hearing device which is what all these “hearing aids” that are cheap are. I have to order them through an audiologist and they are not cheap and barely covered by insurance (most of which won’t cover them if you don’t use THEIR cheaper brand). But hey, at least they’re kinda covered now. For 40 years or so of my life it was all $4,000 - $6,000 out-of-pocket every 5-7 years depending on how long they lasted and if they could be repaired.
Great points - I’ve been thinking the same thing for YEARS now!
It makes no sense!! Like… add a cooling down period between the two features.
I don’t understand why anyone with a brain would need this feature.
I forgot the watches had that hand washing thing. Turned it off after like the second time it activated. I’m an adult and don’t need a watch to tell me how to wash my hands.
If you need a phone to tell you you are in a loud environment, your hearing is already beyond saving.
