Products · Broad category
Chat apps
Raised as a usability problem by 42 people on Hacker News over 19 years (2008–2026), in 37 threads.
This is a broad category rather than one product, so its issues aren't ranked on the home page.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Must juggle many chat apps because no unified client works wellUnreviewed
20082026- Has to remember which of many chat apps each contact uses2026-02-09
- Must juggle many separate chat apps to reach different contacts2023-03-02
- Must juggle half a dozen chat apps because no unified client works well2020-11-29
Every message pings, with no digest or summary optionUnreviewed
20082026- Every message pings the user, with no digest or summary option, so most chat apps end up with notifications disabled2023-05-22
- Pings arrive from three separate chat apps, multiplying interruptions and clutter2021-01-13
- Juggling many chat clients and per-organization logins makes checking messages and notifications impractical2019-11-01
Enter sends multiline messages early, causing accidental sendsUnreviewed
20082026- Enter sends or inserts newline depending on hidden context, feels clumsy when it mismatches expectations2026-04-12
- Pressing Enter sends multiline messages early, causing frequent accidental sends2025-09-02
- Each Enter key press sends a separate notification to the recipient2022-03-11
Chat window takes about two seconds to loadUnreviewed
20082026- Computer freezes for 60 seconds while rendering a chat app2023-03-07
- Chat client lags noticeably in use even on 2019-era hardware2022-01-01
- Chat window takes about two seconds to load, feeling sluggish on an old laptop2018-01-15
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 43 complaints
- Requiring a button tap to send adds friction and forces leaving the keyboard2026-04-12
- Enter sends or inserts newline depending on hidden context, feels clumsy when it mismatches expectations2026-04-12
- Has to remember which of many chat apps each contact uses2026-02-09
- Chat read status is not per-message, making separate exchanges hard to discern and handle2025-10-05
- Enter sends messages accidentally, and settings must be changed on every device and account2025-09-02
- Pressing Enter sends multiline messages early, causing frequent accidental sends2025-09-02
- E2EE makes chat slower and less usable for public communities2025-06-27
- Old conversations become hard to find again, and scrolling back far breaks down2025-02-04
- People misread tone and get frustrated with others trying to understand2025-02-04
- Ctrl+C with no text selected overwrites clipboard with empty chatbox contents, losing copied text2023-10-05
- Read-receipt traffic floods the client in huge channels, slowing loading2023-07-29
- Every message pings the user, with no digest or summary option, so most chat apps end up with notifications disabled2023-05-22
- Computer freezes for 60 seconds while rendering a chat app2023-03-07
- Must juggle many separate chat apps to reach different contacts2023-03-02
- Video calls now take three clicks with loading times instead of one2023-01-21
- Can't easily find an old photo because they don't remember when it was sent2022-12-02
- Must hunt through chat list to switch between active conversations repeatedly2022-12-02
- Public chat discussions are hard to discover, so people repeat the same questions2022-09-09
- Threads are easy to skip over and require manually opening each one to see what's happening2022-09-09
- Each Enter key press sends a separate notification to the recipient2022-03-11
- Bare 'hi' messages force a wait for a reply before the actual question arrives2022-03-11
- Chat client lags noticeably in use even on 2019-era hardware2022-01-01
- Typed ™ turns into a large, badly rendered, off-colored TM that can't be turned off2021-11-01
- Each partial message sent with Enter interrupts and forces re-reading fragments2021-01-23
- Pings arrive from three separate chat apps, multiplying interruptions and clutter2021-01-13
- Must juggle half a dozen chat apps because no unified client works well2020-11-29
- Some chat clients use their own text input box, so the macOS character picker doesn't work there2020-08-08
- Each chat community needs its own tab or app, making information hard to organise and prioritise2020-07-16
- Important threads get hidden or buried, so users can't easily follow topics they care about2020-05-21
- Chat-style input encourages rapid, fragmented messages that derail focused decisions2020-04-03
- Juggling many chat clients and per-organization logins makes checking messages and notifications impractical2019-11-01
- Chat integration is a pain, with crazy server latency and missing features to hack in2019-10-26
- Must search four separate chat platforms to find an old message2019-08-21
- Saying hello and waiting for a reply before asking the real question causes delays and frustration2019-04-13
- Chat messages interrupt focused work and online status invites immediate responses2018-08-13
- Chat window takes about two seconds to load, feeling sluggish on an old laptop2018-01-15
- Screenshots of terminal logs force people to retype the error text to search it2017-09-08
- Clicking close keeps the program running in the background instead of quitting2017-05-24
- Constantly shifting UIs make it easy to accidentally tap the wrong button2017-03-24
- Often fails to receive notifications, making it useless as a messenger2016-12-21
- Replies get scattered across history, so users must hunt for them2012-12-03
- Chat window auto-scrolls to bottom on new posts and sometimes goes black, hiding text in Opera on Mac2010-08-10
- Can't find any chat room directory; top rooms and tags are empty2008-08-15