Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Captive portals
Raised as a usability problem by 23 people on Hacker News over 10 years (2014–2023), in 16 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Captive portals often fail to redirect to the login pageUnreviewed
20142026- Captive portals have poor UX and are very annoying, especially with encrypted DNS2023-07-24
- Captive sign-in pages hinder usability and add no value2021-07-08
- Captive portal doesn't appear, so users can't tell they must log in2021-03-23
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
- Clicking "Let's go" appears to load but stays on the same page2023-12-25
- Captive portals have poor UX and are very annoying, especially with encrypted DNS2023-07-24
- Can't split-screen or switch apps to find credentials, login page ignores password manager2022-06-20
- Captive sign-in pages hinder usability and add no value2021-07-08
- Captive portal doesn't appear, so users can't tell they must log in2021-03-23
- Captive portal is borked, so users must disable encryption to reach login2019-11-03
- HTTPS sites block the Wi-Fi login portal, so users cannot reach it2019-11-02
- Users must hunt for a plain HTTP site to reach the upgrade page2019-11-02
- Captive portals often fail to redirect, so people struggle to reach the login page2019-11-02
- Users don't realize they need a special site to reach a Wi-Fi login page2019-11-02
- Captive portal re-enables after an hour and breaks after waking from sleep2019-10-24
- Captive portals on mobile fail to load over HTTPS, forcing workarounds to get onto Wi-Fi2018-06-11
- Browser blocks the hotel wifi login redirect over HTTPS, so the user can't get online2018-04-02
- Captive portals return HTML instead of expected data, breaking apps, forms and cached content2017-02-28
- Can't reach the captive portal login page because HTTPS sites break instead of redirecting2017-02-28
- Captive portals are often broken or unusable on phones with tiny UI2017-02-01
- Wifi portals fail on HTTPS sites, leaving users with timeouts and no login page2017-01-11
- Android 6.0 makes it hard to get the captive portal page to open for clicking2017-01-11
- Captive portals confuse users and cause endless workaround hunting to reach network access2017-01-11
- Captive portal fails to appear, so user must hunt for a non-https site to trigger it2017-01-10
- Captive portals show HTTPS browser warnings and force repeated click-throughs at frequented coffee shops2015-06-20
- Users wait on stalled HTTPS pages or confusing errors before spotting login2015-06-13
- Portal appears unpredictably, sometimes only on opening a browser, and mail shows certificate errors2015-01-05
- Captive portals fail in many ways, with apps failing on network access before login.2014-08-27