Everyone I've ever known with water hard enough to be a bother just installs a whole-house water softener, so all the water inside the house is already softened. Seems inefficient to soften only the dishwasher when a whole house system is pretty cheap.

How could it be less efficient to soften less water?

We had a Bosch dishwasher with a built-in water softener when we lived in Lake in the Hills, IL, a suburb of Chicago. The municipal water there (from wells) was extremely hard and it made a big difference.

We now have a Bosch dishwasher in another house in NY state. The water is not hard (it's from one of the Finger Lakes), and the dishwasher does not have a softener, but we like the brand. After reading this story we looked up how to tweak the rinse aid dispenser and turned it down from "5" to "1".

Why don't you like the softener water? I thought it was better for the skin.

Softened water feels slimy to me - similar to seawater.

I actually do have a whole-house softener which came with my house. I installed a bypass valve so it does not feed the pipes in my home.

It may be over-softening. Our water felt slimy until we replaced our old unit. The new unit uses way less salt (at least 10x less) and the water feels normal.

I believe the old ones had an adjustment, but I can confirm new units definitely do. We hardly use any salt at all.

It's easier to rinse soap off with hard water.