Products · Pattern or everyday thing
File systems
Raised as a usability problem by 42 people on Hacker News over 18 years (2009–2026), in 38 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Forced folder hierarchy makes files belonging in several places hard to findUnreviewed
20092026- Files spread across apps are hard to find when user wants them2026-10-21
- Forces arbitrary parent/child decisions, making files hard to organize and find2026-04-07
- Users get confused by the file system and break things when interacting with it directly2024-10-20
Hardlinks for filing one file in several folders is confusingUnreviewed
20092026- Putting one file in several folders via hardlinks is a poorly designed experience2025-02-21
- Files can't sit in multiple places; links break easily with no backlinks2022-09-03
- Must manually make links in multiple directories and forgets which ones hold a file2012-05-20
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 45 complaints
- Files spread across apps are hard to find when user wants them2026-10-21
- Markdown files in folders are very hard to query or traverse by relationship without a tool2026-04-08
- Forces arbitrary parent/child decisions, making files hard to organize and find2026-04-07
- Filesystem abstraction is terrible for usability and fits poorly with network application design2025-10-24
- Sandboxing breaks multi-file workflows, forcing users to explicitly reopen each file2025-08-28
- Putting one file in several folders via hardlinks is a poorly designed experience2025-02-21
- Users get confused by the file system and break things when interacting with it directly2024-10-20
- File system abstraction is complex and unintuitive for people to use2024-07-16
- Hard to decide file names and locations, and hard to find files later2024-04-19
- Can only select whole directories, not individual files, which is counterintuitive2024-02-22
- Forced to remember paths and folders and depend on own discipline to organize files2023-01-15
- Files can't sit in multiple places; links break easily with no backlinks2022-09-03
- Users must remember where every file is stored and navigate folders to find things2022-07-15
- Apps store data their own way, making copying, pasting and moving stuff painful2022-02-24
- Navigating nested folder hierarchies feels painfully slow and awkward2021-11-07
- Leaky file abstractions let users try operations that silently fail for unclear reasons2021-08-06
- Strict single-place short-named folder taxonomies are a huge pain and feel unnatural2021-07-21
- Deeply nested folders make files hard to find again when the parent folder is forgotten2021-06-01
- Directory names are too vague or too similar, so files are hard to find2021-02-05
- Developers must jump through many hoops and often get safe writes wrong2020-11-14
- Hard to find a filesystem that works on Linux, Windows, and Mac for transferring files2020-03-28
- Files need names and are found by hierarchy, so the user can't simply query them by tags2020-02-19
- Users can't tell where files are stored or break out of abstractions2019-10-13
- Folder-tree organization is awful for people; they rely on search instead2018-11-01
- Ordinary file writes can accidentally corrupt files, and atomic writes are hard to get right2018-03-30
- Navigating the file system is confusing, with many default folders that clutter it2016-10-10
- Creating files and linking them is slow and cumbersome, needing other apps2015-12-16
- Files named file.c, File.c and FILE.c collide, breaking extraction and builds2015-01-13
- File extensions conflate content type, application, and file name into one confusing concept2013-04-30
- Deeply nested identical-looking folders are confusing and disorienting for most people2013-03-25
- Most file systems assume local access only, and large file collections take a lengthy indexing step before they are usable2012-07-26
- Commenter cannot browse 5,380 titles inside a folder-based file system structure2012-07-26
- Nested directories are opaque, so users can't tell what's inside without opening each one2012-07-26
- Browsing music through the filesystem is dreadful, lacking the sort orders a music app offers2012-07-26
- Users struggle with folders they did not create and cannot understand or edit2012-07-26
- Word 'directory' confuses people who expect a lookup list rather than a container2012-07-26
- After misfiling a file, users can't find it in any subfolder and must fall back to search2012-07-26
- Sorting data into a directory tree is bothersome, and finding files on a messy disk is harder still2012-07-02
- Must manually make links in multiple directories and forgets which ones hold a file2012-05-20
- Regular users don't understand nested directories, so they can't organize or find files2011-06-09
- Forced folder hierarchy makes it hard to find files that belong in several places2010-10-25
- Files get lost easily because filesystems are too vast to navigate2010-07-16
- Apps save files in inconsistent folders, so users get lost looking for files2010-05-10
- Users have no clue where they saved a file2010-05-10
- Normal users are forced to interact with file systems and file names too often2009-05-03