Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Autocorrect
Raised as a usability problem by 22 people on Hacker News over 14 years (2012–2025), in 19 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Autocorrect changes already-typed words even after manual correctionUnreviewed
20122026- Autocorrect changes words the user typed, so it is hard to write without it2024-04-13
- Autocorrect replaces words and changes previously typed words, even after manual correction2024-02-06
- Autocorrect changes proper names and words the user already fixed, wasting time2022-10-12
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 22 complaints
- Autocorrect hinders writing messages mixing English and Maltese2025-12-05
- Autocorrect changes words the user typed, so it is hard to write without it2024-04-13
- Autocorrect replaces words and changes previously typed words, even after manual correction2024-02-06
- Autocorrect never suggests the word bureaucracy even with close misspellings2023-03-17
- Autocorrect changes proper names and words the user already fixed, wasting time2022-10-12
- Autocorrect garbles posts and makes typing in multiple languages nearly impossible on mobile2021-10-31
- Autocorrect cannot be turned off or overridden, so wrong corrections stick2021-10-20
- Autocorrect turned on silently, changing words without user noticing until after sending2021-09-14
- Typos go unfixed or merged together, and suggested words are far from what was typed2021-01-26
- Auto-correct mangles unusual words, slang and names, making correcting it painful2020-08-08
- Corrections keep reapplying, so the user has to fix the same word repeatedly2020-04-30
- Manually fixing wrong autocompletes is more frustrating than typing without them2020-04-30
- Typed text is automatically swapped for emoji the user did not choose2019-09-02
- Autocorrect changes the intended word just before sending, without the user noticing2018-05-09
- Autocorrect changes words unexpectedly when typing on a phone2018-03-13
- Auto-correct retroactively changes text the user already entered, which feels physically unpleasant2018-02-21
- Autofill and autocorrect change what users typed, causing wrong addresses and constant edits2017-11-05
- Autocorrect replaces correctly spelled words with wrong alternatives, like changing "I had" to "I has"2017-11-05
- Suggestions appear slower than typing on desktop and corrections are often wrong on phones2017-11-05
- Autocorrect changes typed text, so users keep sending wrong tweets2013-12-26
- Autocorrect fights against typing shortened words like ur or b2013-03-14
- Autocorrect interrupts typing and undoing a wrong change is fiddly to click2012-05-04