Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Animations in user interfaces
Raised as a usability problem by 24 people on Hacker News over 15 years (2012–2026), in 23 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
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Every issue, all time, most people first
Excessive animations delay user interactionUnreviewed
20122026- Animations waste time and make interfaces feel slower2026-07-05
- Animations make users wait for something pointless before they can act2024-03-08
- Animations running too slowly create a perceptible delay between action and response2024-03-08
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 24 complaints
- Content fades in as you scroll, which is distracting2026-09-27
- Animation-disable settings are ignored by many apps, so animations keep playing anyway2026-09-24
- Animations waste time and make interfaces feel slower2026-07-05
- Animations make users wait for something pointless before they can act2024-03-08
- Animations running too slowly create a perceptible delay between action and response2024-03-08
- Fancy animations make user interfaces harder to use2023-12-15
- Excessive animations delay user interaction and make interfaces feel slower2023-08-07
- Paragraphs appear one slowly at a time while scrolling, making reading annoyingly slow2022-07-15
- Long animations make users wait and swallow their next inputs2021-12-05
- Animations interrupt the flow of reading the article2021-11-07
- Can't tell when a sliding button is active, so taps misfire and interactions feel delayed2020-11-01
- Animations run alongside the text, distracting readers while they read2020-05-19
- Animations block the next action, making interfaces feel slower than needed2020-02-10
- Animations delay interaction and move click targets out from under the user2018-12-04
- UI animations freeze input, so users must wait or tap twice2018-09-22
- Unnecessary animations make interfaces feel slow and less responsive2018-08-03
- Animations make everything feel slower when trying to get things done2017-11-07
- Excessive animation distracts users and is hard on those with motion sensitivity2017-10-18
- Animations are too long, distracting and make common interactions slow and laggy2017-09-04
- Animations cannot be fully turned off, forcing users to hunt for workarounds2016-03-19
- Animations delay menus and actions after clicking, and move buttons away from the cursor2015-10-06
- Poorly timed animations make interfaces worse than sudden changes would2015-07-27
- Scrolling feels slow and choppy because the page re-renders constantly2015-04-21
- Decorative motion on the page distracts users from what needs their attention2012-02-10