Products · Broad category
Desktop user interfaces
Raised as a usability problem by 19 people on Hacker News over 17 years (2010–2026), in 19 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.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Desktop UIs copy mobile designs, becoming harder to use on large screensUnreviewed
20102026- Full desktop environments squeezed onto a tiny touchscreen are miserable to use2026-05-21
- Desktop UIs have become worse because they copy mobile designs, making them harder to use on large screens2025-09-18
- Desktop UI is fragmented, clunky and bloated with no real benefit2020-02-15
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 19 complaints
- Full desktop environments squeezed onto a tiny touchscreen are miserable to use2026-05-21
- Text selection is not dedicated to a mouse button, so selecting text conflicts with interacting with elements2025-09-24
- Desktop UIs have become worse because they copy mobile designs, making them harder to use on large screens2025-09-18
- Too many windows and tabs across apps, hard to find things2025-09-12
- Desktop icons get covered by open windows and can't be many2024-02-25
- Teens get confused by context menus and desktop UI elements not found on touch devices2023-09-04
- Desktop interfaces and web apps feel sluggish to respond to input2022-12-14
- Ordinary people struggle with basic desktop actions like finding USB disks, copy/paste, and menus2022-02-07
- Features are hidden, so users only find them by chance and feel they were never told2021-12-15
- Desktop screens show so much information that they feel overwhelming and stressful2021-08-16
- Desktop UI is fragmented, clunky and bloated with no real benefit2020-02-15
- Desktop interfaces have lost usability and coherence, with touch paradigms mixing in and hurting productivity2020-02-08
- Desktop UIs are seen as needing improvement, with web tech encouraging poor development2018-08-03
- Desktop monitor brightness is hard to adjust, with awful OSD controls and no OS integration2018-07-08
- Users had to click through repeated confirmations and do tedious mouse steps2016-10-20
- Desktop UI is too complicated for simple app, game and media use2016-01-19
- Desktop navigation via screen reader is harder than on tablets, and many websites don't work well with screen readers2015-05-14
- Skeuomorphic icons based on obsolete objects confuse new users who never saw them2010-04-16
- Interacting with things away from the screen feels unintuitive compared with touching what's in front of you2010-03-08