Colors don't bleed much these days. Some might, e.g. on handmade clothing such as tyedye but most commercial colors don't.

If you wash items of different weights, fabrics, etc. together the load can get unbalanced more easily. Such as as single heavy towel or jacket in with a bunch of light synthetic items.

The "towels" setting uses warmer water and faster spin speed but an overall shorter cycle (at least on my washer) compared to the "normal" cycle. This probably presumes that towels usually are made of cotton and aren't very dirty.

I agree that a fully manual mode would be nice. My washer (LG) doesn't have that but by knowing what the various cycles and optional settings (e.g. soil level, extra rinse) do you can get pretty close to what you want.

> I agree that a fully manual mode would be nice.

Enter "why wifi on your washing machine makes sense"