In a method for operating a household appliance, a communications connection is established between an external operating facility and the household appliance. An application is executed on the external operating facility and configured so as to receive data from and/or to transmit data to the household appliance via the communications connection. An interaction of a user with the application of the external operating facility is detected and the communications connection between the external operating facility and the household appliance is terminated in dependence upon an expiration of a predetermined time interval since a last detected interaction of the user with the application of the external operating facility.