Briar

Raised as a usability problem by 9 people on Hacker News over 8 years (2019–2026), in 9 threads.

People raised many different problems with Briar, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.

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 10 complaints

Setting up contact pairing via links or QR code never worked for the user2026-01-16
Desktop app is very slow, sometimes taking 10-20 seconds to respond2026-01-16
Manual pairing with each user makes it unusable outside a family context2025-11-15
No way to delete or edit posts, so one slip is permanent2025-03-15
Has to log in manually again after every device reboot2022-11-21
App crashes immediately after trying to add a contact2022-10-31
Commenter says the app's usability leads people to shoot themselves in the foot2022-01-22
Can't figure out how to change the listening interface2021-09-27
Requires an existing social graph before you can start using it2020-02-18
Unclear whether messages deliver reliably or work over cellular data2019-09-03