Files app

Raised as a usability problem by 10 people on Hacker News over 17 years (2010–2026), in 10 threads.

People raised many different problems with Files app, 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 10 complaints

Files live inside apps, so storage limits and file access break down and are hard to help fix2026-10-20
Kids see browsing the file system as dark wizardry, too confusing to use2025-04-10
Noticeable subsecond lag when opening subfolders, slower than native Explorer2025-02-19
Files transfers confusing; files missing or duplicated, unclear which version is newer2023-05-09
File semantics are so complicated that people get them wrong2022-09-06
Feels sluggish and unresponsive compared to the native file explorer2022-06-06
Copies can't resume after failure and abort on every duplicate file2020-09-21
Browsing large directories or copying data freezes or crashes Files, sometimes breaking it until reboot2020-02-01
Git object files clutter Files and cannot be selected, moved or deleted2019-10-29
Non-technical users can't find saved files or understand filesystems and folder trees2010-05-10