This Person Discovered That the iPhone Camera Can Tell Her What Laundry Symbols Mean

Technology has always been, and will likely remain, a big double-edged sword. On the one hand, having unfettered access to everything and everyone at all times via internet and smartphones has generated immense ongoing social conflicts that we have yet to resolve. On the other hand, having a smartphone on hand can help us look up and understand all of the important and necessary life skills that schools and college often fail to prepare us for. Case in point, laundry.

There are more rules than you might expect when it comes to washing your clothes in a washing machine and making sure they don't get ruined. There's a lot to keep track of, and more often than not, we're forced to rely on old-fashioned lessons and half-remembered tips from our parents.

Fortunately, we live in the future, dystopian though it may be. And as one TikToker discovered, an iPhone feature can tell us exactly how to take care of our laundry, especially when it comes to those weird symbols.

Aleisa on TikTok (@wtfaleisa) made a shocking discovery when trying to do her laundry. Namely, she singled out the tags that you'll find on almost any article of clothing. You know, the ones that show information on the material of said clothing and what you should do to care for this particular garment. These tags will also often feature those weird laundry symbols that no one really bothers to explain.

As Aleisa informed in her January 2024 TikTok, though, iPhone users can finally make sense of these laundry symbols. According to her, you can apparently take a picture of the tags. By clicking the little sparkly "i" icon that should appear, it will bring you to a menu that interprets exactly what each symbol means and how they can help you care for your laundry.

Reportedly, no extra app or download is required. This feature is supposedly built into the iPhone's inherent camera app, so you can start snapping pictures of your clothing tags and upping your knowledge of laundry care right away!

"I was definitely born in the right generation," Aleisa boasts in her TikTok after having discovered this function. "Because, what do you mean a little rectangle in my pocket can take a picture of the tags of my clothes and tell me exactly how to take care of the clothes without downloading an app?"

Folks in the comments were all too shocked to discover this feature on their own iPhones.

One person wrote, "Why doesn't Apple tell us this but they tell us when they make the phone 10 milligrams lighter?"

"This is what I want Apple to tell me, not that my iCloud storage is full," another person commented.

Other folks even report that iPhones can supposedly do the same thing with warning lights in car dashboards and even types of flowers.

iPhones are a lot of things, but they can still be helpful in ways that people don't often expect.