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It’s honestly terrible at the moment. There are improvements coming in the next update so that’ll maybe help. Not exactly a flagship feature for me though.
 
I agree it is really bad right now. Maybe only works a 1/4 of the time and that is generous.
 
I’ve noticed it picks up much more consistently if you wash your hands with the water running. Being from CA (any maybe other areas do this too?) we were always taught to turn off the water while you scrub to conserve. The initial and ending rinse sound doesn’t seem enough to consistently trigger hand washing countdown until the “done” tap.
Correct. If you try to conserve like Mom taught you, you will get in trouble with Apple and the new app, because it thinks you stopped prematurely.

The feature worked well for me on my series 5 during beta. I sold the 5 and waiting for my 6 to arrive tomorrow.
 
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I've turned it on for the home coming notification and had three experiences on my AW 4 with hand washing detection:
- detected hands washing during riding a bicycle, it told me "well done" :D
- first usage after home coming was quite laggy: each five seconds of washing it only counted one second :D
- second usage after home coming: it worked as expected.
 
I've turned it on for the home coming notification and had three experiences on my AW 4 with hand washing detection:
- detected hands washing during riding a bicycle, it told me "well done" :D
- first usage after home coming was quite laggy: each five seconds of washing it only counted one second :D
- second usage after home coming: it worked as expected.
I noticed that the count down will take longer if the watch doesn’t detect consistent wrist bending action during the lather washing.
 
I don’t know. I just wash my hands like I normally would and it detected every time. S5 and watchOS 7.0
 
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Yep - my usual method of washing hands --- squirt liquid soap on hands, lather up all over for 5 seconds, then rinse under water for 5-7 seconds using same motions.

I've found that usually the washing hands counter starts when I'm under water and rinsing my hands.

I'll try the wrist bending as most of my hand washing is jagged back and forth movements and see how that works out.

Washing my hands in the kitchen sink has triggered almost perfect detections whereas our bathroom sinks (tiny and not very audible) rarely trigger the hand washing countdown.
 
Mine works fine as long as the water is running but more than that, I really appreciate the feature that gives me an alert when I walk through my front door that I need to wash my hands, because sometimes I forget… I’m old…
 
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Right. I've finally managed to work out how to get this working

It seems to detect "traditional" hand washing, rather than the more thorough "medical" hand washing that we've been advised to use since lockdown.

How I've got it to work is

1. Place soap on hands
2. Under running water put hands together, thumbs upwards
3. Move hands forwards and backwards together to lather and rinse.

It seems to be happy interlacing fingers, or haveing the occasional rotation, but the above seems to be the trigger.
 
Mine is 100% accurate because of my habit patterns... i leave the water running at least until it pops up the chime (usually 4-6 seconds and it does count that time and start with just 14-16 seconds remaining) and I use aggressive non stop hand-rubbing. My wife who always right away turns off the water and is more "gentle" with the hand rubbing tends to have it lag so much at recognizing what she is doing that by the time it kicks in she is finishing and unwilling to keep going for the sake of the watch.

Seems hit or miss, works for me but that's because I do it the way it wants lol.
 
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