If the current COVID-19 pandemic has reminded the world of one thing it should have always been doing, it’s washing our hands. While it sounds simple and easy enough for all of us to do on a regular basis, humans have a habit of being lazy and cutting corners, which sadly means that easy tasks such as basic hygiene tend to get reduced in terms of the effort put into it.
All that is changing though with hand-washing now considered extremely important by pretty much everyone. Sadly though, the world still needs reminding and this is something which Google is going to ensure happens through the different devices powered by Wear OS (which admittedly, isn’t many).
This new feature, first spotted by Android Police, is part of the v5.4.0 update for the Google Clock app. The wash your hands reminder has been added into the Clock application and will send alerts every three hours to remind you to head to a sink and scrub your hands. Once you are ready, you can start a 40-second countdown. If this alert is intrusive to you, it can also still be disabled through the clock settings on the device.
It sounds like a bit of a silly feature, but in a world which still takes such a vital personal hygiene habit so lightly, perhaps it’s a necessary one for some people. So please, wash your hands’ people otherwise the devices around you may soon be making sure you do. Now if they could make gaming controllers or TV remotes refuse to work with dirty hands then you might just see some behaviour change.
Last Updated: April 15, 2020
