Products · Product
Clippy
Raised as a usability problem by 14 people on Hacker News over 15 years (2012–2026), in 8 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Assistant popped up intrusively and was hard to dismissUnreviewed
20122026- Assistant popped up intrusively and was hard to get rid of2025-11-29
- Hide option doesn't actually disable the assistant; it keeps popping up, confusing users2025-05-06
- Obnoxious assistant consumes screen space without offering value2025-03-27
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 13 complaints
- Clippy must be clicked through repeatedly to get rid of him2026-02-10
- Clippy's animations load from disk and slow down the computer2025-11-30
- Current interfaces are harder to tolerate than Clippy's poor UI/UX design2025-11-30
- Assistant popped up intrusively and was hard to get rid of2025-11-29
- Scrolling triggers malicious ad redirects and a fake remove-ads button opens ads2025-05-06
- Hide option doesn't actually disable the assistant; it keeps popping up, confusing users2025-05-06
- Couldn't find how to get back to the normal chat screen from settings2025-05-06
- Obnoxious assistant consumes screen space without offering value2025-03-27
- Interrupts users with notifications even when they have done nothing2023-05-18
- Cute onboarding makes the product unusable for returning users2022-09-12
- Assistant is hard to get right because it has to guess user intent2020-06-10
- Appears at random intervals, interrupting, and its triggers are unpredictable so users cannot learn it2012-05-30
- Suggests wrong help, or correctly flags struggle caused by awful underlying UI2012-05-29