Step-by-step: scan a clothing care label with your phone camera and get all 44 ISO laundry symbols explained offline on Android. Four apps compared.
To read a laundry care label with your phone camera, open Laundry Symbols & Care Labels on Android, hold the label flat under good light and point the camera at it: the app names every pictogram it finds and explains all 44 ISO care symbols in plain sentences. It is free, runs offline and collects no data.
Find the label first: inside the collar, in the left side seam near the hem, or in the waistband. Free it from the folds so the strip lies flat, because a symbol bent across a crease is the commonest reason a scan comes back short.
Then fix the light. Daylight near a window beats a ceiling bulb, and both beat the phone torch at 10 centimetres, which blows out the white label. Hold the phone a hand's width away.
Open the app, choose the scanner and grant the camera permission. Frame the label so its pictogram row fills the viewfinder, hold still until the preview sharpens, and capture. The app lists what it recognised: wash tub and temperature, bleaching triangle, drying square, iron, professional-cleaning circle.
Read the sentences, not the icons. A chart gives a shape; the app gives an instruction. Save the garment to My Closet and you never decode the same jumper twice.
Android treats a repeated dismissal as final. Google's guidance states that once a user
You can also skip the camera: hand the app a photo of the label instead, through Android's system photo picker, which
Photograph what survives, then finish by hand in the symbol library, browsable without the camera. Shapes outlast printing, and GINETEX's index puts numbers behind the ironing dots:
If the care strip is gone, look for the label the law cares about.
Nowhere. The Google Play Data safety section for Laundry Symbols & Care Labels declares no data collected and no data shared with third parties, and the scanner runs on the device, which is why it works in airplane mode. A care-label photo usually has a brand, a size and a garment you own in frame.
The app's own release notes on Google Play describe the fallback in one sentence:
No camera? Pick a photo of the care label instead — it is read exactly the same way.
An app that never needs the network cannot leak a photo.
Engin Kütük's
It adds an assistant you can ask whether a shirt will shrink.
The trade-offs are on the listing: 50+ downloads, in-app purchases, and a page last updated on 30 March 2026.
Ntttam's
It is explicit about screen support — portrait and landscape, tablets, light and dark themes — and is offered in English and Vietnamese.
It contains ads, was last updated on 9 July 2026, and is a lookup tool: no closet, no load sorting.
Bob Marin's
It goes beyond symbols into stain tips, which the other three do not cover.
Weigh the listing honestly: 10+ downloads, ads and in-app purchases, and a Data safety entry saying it may collect location and financial info and share app activity with third parties.
It covers all 44 ISO care symbols, declares no data collected and none shared, and scans in airplane mode.
My Closet stores a garment's full care profile, and load sorting splits a pile into compatible washes, naming every conflict.
Against it: Android only, no App Store version, and a page updated on 24 August 2026 with 0+ downloads and no public rating.
When the garment is expensive or vintage and the label is ambiguous, a scan is a second opinion, not a verdict. A cleaner reads fibre, construction and trims no pictogram describes, and the circle symbol exists to send you there.
It is also wrong when the label has faded past legibility, when the symbols follow a national scheme ISO 3758 does not cover, or when your real question is stain removal: the app explains what you may do to a garment, not how to rescue one.
Yes. Laundry Symbols & Care Labels runs the whole recognition step on the phone, so it works in airplane mode, in a basement laundry room and on a plane. Nothing about the label is uploaded, and the Google Play Data safety section declares no data collected and none shared with third parties. A scan takes the same time offline as on hotel Wi-Fi.
No. The camera is the fast path, not the only one. If you decline the permission, or the phone has no usable camera, you can hand the app a photo of the label through Android's system photo picker and the result is identical. The picker shares only the images you tap, and the app asks for the camera when it is needed rather than at first launch.
Almost always light or geometry rather than the app. A pictogram folded across a seam, a label curled inside a collar, a torch close enough to blow out the white background, or a half-focused frame will each drop a symbol. Flatten the strip, move to daylight, hold the phone a hand's width away and let focus settle before capturing. Re-scanning fixes most misses.
The app covers all 44 ISO care symbols, grouped into the five families on every label: the tub for washing, the triangle for bleaching, the square for drying, the iron for ironing and the circle for professional cleaning. The whole library is browsable by hand without the camera, which is the route to take when a label has faded and you are matching a shape by eye.
Often yes, from the composition label. Regulation (EU) No 1007/2011 governs textile fibre names and the labelling of fibre composition, so European garments carry a fibre tag independently of any care symbol. Reading 100% wool, or 65% polyester and 35% cotton, tells you which care family the garment belongs to, and the app then explains the symbols that family normally carries.
Treat it as a fast second opinion rather than a verdict. The scan reads a printed pictogram, so it is as right as the label and as clear as your photo. For a suit, a vintage piece or anything with unusual trims, the professional-cleaning circle is the symbol that matters: it exists to send you to a cleaner who assesses fibre and construction no pictogram describes.
Not with this app. Laundry Symbols & Care Labels is published on Google Play only and there is no App Store version, so an iPhone user needs a different tool. Availability of the alternatives named above differs app by app and should be checked on each listing before installing. If you use both platforms, keep the closet on the Android phone.
It remembers. Saving a garment to My Closet stores its complete care profile, so the second wash is a lookup rather than a scan, and load sorting can then split today's pile into compatible washes and name the specific conflict each time it separates two items. The trade-off of a phone-only app is the privacy promise's other side: nothing is uploaded, so a lost phone means a lost closet.