Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Client certificates in browsers
Raised as a usability problem by 19 people on Hacker News over 14 years (2010–2023), in 18 threads.
People raised many different problems with Client certificates in browsers, 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 20 complaints
- Modal certificate picker pops up on arbitrary sites, and wrong choice can't be corrected without restarting2023-12-25
- Browser pops up certificate picker on every site, or exposes identity to trackers2023-12-24
- Setting up client certificates is error prone, with many incompatible ways to use them2023-01-25
- Browser client certificate UI is so broken it is effectively unusable2022-01-26
- Browser interface for client certificates is poorly designed and awkward to use2021-11-17
- Browser client certificate handling is horrible, intrusive, and doesn't sync2021-05-13
- Client certificate management is awful for humans to operate2020-12-24
- Browser UIs for installing client certificates were so hard to use that sites needed per-browser guides2020-10-22
- Client certs are painful to use across multiple devices and browsers2018-10-19
- Client certificate setup in early browsers was confusing, spread across separate complex dialogs2017-05-18
- Non-tech users must export and import certificates between browsers, needing step-by-step screenshots, and sites may fail in the wrong browser2016-11-23
- Client certs make logging out and managing certs across devices extremely difficult for users2016-11-23
- Browser UX for using client certificates is horrible and hard to work with2016-06-17
- Client-side TLS certificates are unbearably clunky to use compared to SSH keys2016-04-18
- Client certificate UI is horrendous and the feature is unusable as implemented2015-12-27
- Client certificate UI is off-putting, inconsistent and terrible across browsers2015-01-31
- Setting up the client-side certificate on Mac is atrocious and only suits advanced users2014-04-09
- Certificate selection UI is terrible and scares non-technical users away2014-04-09
- Client-side certificates have a bad user interface, so banks refused to use them for login2012-05-10
- Users cannot move their client certificate store to a new browser easily2010-11-18