What do all the laundry symbols actually mean? Now your iPhone can tell you

We’ve all heard it, Boomers complaining youngsters rely on our phones too much – but when they can help us do our laundry, why wouldn’t we?

That’s one of the new features added to the iPhone camera app in iOS 17, helping to make sure you never shrink another jumper.

Apple introduced Visual Look Up, its answer to Google Lens, in iOS 15. The clever function, driven by artificial intelligence, allows users to photograph objects they want to identify in real life – plants, statues, art, dogs – and find out more about them.

Simply snap a photo, then let iOS do the rest, matching it with similar images to provide more information about what you’re seeing. Maybe you want to know which artist painted a certain picture, or whether a flower in your garden is poisonous to pets.

In its latest update, a far more mundane – but essential – task has been tackled, as it can now tell you what the mysterious hieroglyphs on your clothes labels mean.

What’s the difference between one dot and two inside an iron? Does a hand mean handwash or a handwash cycle? What do A, P, F and W in a circle mean?

Man loads washing machine — Laundry will never be confusing again (Picture: Getty/iStockphoto)

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It also struggled with a worn black label with white writing, rather than vice versa.

Overall though it is still a very nifty tool for checking your beloved items before throwing them in the machine and helping avoid any costly mistakes.