Why does the delay start button on my new dishwasher just blink and do nothing?

unfortunatly your neighbor is right, at least for the 800 series. I ran into the exact same thing when I moved into a place with one. On those machines the delay function is tied to Home Connect, and if the dishwasher has never been set up on wifi, the delay button on the panel just blinks at you and refuses to do anything. There's no hidden button combo or long-press trick that unlocks it. I spent a good twenty minutes mashing buttons thinking I was missing somethig obvious, but no, it's app or nothing on that model.

The setup itself isn't too bad if you decide to go that route. Download Home Connect, put the dishwasher in pairing mode (there's a button combo for that, it's in the manual or on Bosch's site), connect it to your network, and from then on you can set a start time from your phone. The catch is the app can be slow to connect, and the remote start only works if the machine was allready loaded and powered on. So you still have to load it and hit power before bed, then schedule the run from the couch. Kind of defeats the point of a physical delay button, honestly. One other thing to check before you bother with any of that: some 800 series units shipped in a mode where wifi features are disabled from the factory, and there's a setting in the menu to turn the home network function on or off. If it's switched off, the delay button will blink no matter what. Dig through the settings menu, it's usally holding a couple buttons down to get in there. Or do what I ended up doing most nights: just start it before bed. These things are quiet enough that I genuinely couldn't tell it was running from the bedroom, and the cycle finishes before I'm up anyway. Annoying that they locked a basic feature behind an app, but at least the machine itself cleans well.

Agree with everything said here. The app annoyance gets worse over time too. Mine worked fine for about a year, then I swapped routers and the dishwasher quietly dropped off the wifi. The delay button went back to blinking like it was brand new and I had no clue why. Had to go through the pairing dance all over again just to get it back. So if yours ever acts up after a network change, that's probably it.

Funny timing on this thread because I hit the same blinking delay button last month. What actually sorted me out was pulling up the manual PDF on Bosch's site instead of digging the paper one out of the drawer. It listed the exact buttons to hold to get into the settings menu, and sure enugh the home network option was switched off on mine. Toggled it on and the app pairing finally went through. My old machine was a 300 series and the delay worked right off the panel with no wifi at all, so this whole thing still feels like a step sideways to me. But mine runs overnight fine now and I sleep through it easily.

One thing I'd flag before you bother with the app, and this is coming from someone who set mine up thinking it would be a five minute job: Home Connect wants an account, not just your wifi password, so you'll be making an email registration for a dishwasher wether you like it or not. Also worth measuring the actual cycle length on whatever wash program you use, because on mine the heavy cycle runs long enough that even a delayed start finishes well after I'm out of bed, which made the whole exercise pointless for my schedule.

Update: found the manual PDF online like one of you suggested, and the button hold thing got me into the settings at least, so that part's sorted. But now I'm staring down the whole account signup for the app before the delay will even work. Has anyone skipped the account part somehow, or is there really no way around it?