Laundry Day Just Got Easier With This Little-Known iPhone Feature

If you love taking photos on your iPhone, you will likely have noticed that the Apple operating system now has a feature called Visual Look Up that can help you identify objects within a photo. Most commonly, people use it to figure out which plant, bird, or adorable dog breed they are looking at, but it also has the capability of identifying animals, bugs, artwork, famous landmarks, and even those cryptic symbols on your car dashboard. Very handy! However, this clever tool can actually help you on laundry day as well, by deciphering exactly what all of those laundry symbols mean on your garment's tag. 

Due in large part to the fact that they are not universal, laundry symbols are an enigmatic series of shapes, dots, lines, and the occasional letter or number. While some look vaguely like the intended instruction, such as the iron, others can be harder to interpret. Enter the iPhone trick, as revealed by social media user Tidymess_dxb on Instagram, which is here to save the day and remove all confusion from the meaning of these symbols. By simply taking a picture of the tag and opening the info panel on the photo, you can use this life-changing laundry hack to ensure you have the perfect washing, drying, and ironing game plan for a smooth laundry day free of ruined clothing.

To try out this handy Instagram trick for yourself, simply take a photo of the laundry care symbol tag with your iPhone. Open the photo in the Photos app, and tap the information button at the bottom that looks like a circle with a lowercase "i" inside. The "i" portion of the info symbol may temporarily be replaced with a symbol of a washing machine, which is simply indicating that Visual Look Up for laundry symbols is available and processed for this photo (if the Visual Look Up is still processing for a new photo, you may still see the standard info symbol). Alternatively, you can swipe up on the screen any time to open the information panel up from the bottom of the screen.

On the second row (just below the caption box), you will see a laundry symbol and the words "Look up Laundry Care," though it may take a few seconds to pop up if you are opening the photo for the first time. Tap the words laundry care, and the phone will open a list of all laundry symbols present on the tag, as well as a detailed description of what each one means, like your own personal laundry symbol cheat sheet. 

Pretty cool, right? The days of guessing how to care for your clothes are over, thanks to this quick and easy iPhone laundry hack that will save you time and the headache of misinterpreted laundry symbols.