foobar2000

Raised as a usability problem by 22 people on Hacker News over 16 years (2011–2026), in 19 threads.

People raised many different problems with foobar2000, 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 23 complaints

Picking one song plays it forever, forcing manual return to random; can't find recently added tracks2026-09-07
UI renders tiny under Wine because scaling is broken2026-01-27
Strange to use, with a layout that is hard to get used to2025-09-12
SD card locked in the folder picker even after granting permissions2025-02-16
Felt completely lost trying to set up the same music workflow again2024-07-31
Couldn't make mouse wheel control volume like Winamp, and the UI is horrible2022-09-10
Ctrl+W closed the app and deleted the playlist, emptying the library2022-01-26
Browsing music requires too many clicks; songs hidden behind extra steps2022-01-25
IPod sync plugin often doesn't work correctly, forcing workarounds2021-11-23
Hard to use and configure, with unappealing aesthetics2019-06-04
Customizing the interface requires hacking an obscure C++ SDK or GDI+ and JavaScript2018-05-24
Installation process is a little convoluted2017-06-26
The default interface is difficult to use out of the box2017-06-26
Default layout is poor, so user must spend effort configuring it before it works nicely2017-02-07
Small buttons and separate pause/play/stop controls make it hard to use, especially with touch2015-05-15
HN link leads to a login page that assumes you already have an invite, which is confusing2014-11-12
Queue contents are not visible in the UI without installing a plugin2014-04-25
Cannot make foobar2000 accept a self-signed certificate, so HTTPS streaming from home fails2014-04-23
After the queue ends, it keeps playing tracks from the source playlist unexpectedly2014-04-22
Replay gain tagging makes some albums play very quietly on one player2014-03-04
Arcane UI that is hard to understand2012-03-26
Share button fails silently, so user cannot tell whether sharing worked2011-11-28
Can't find a way to delete files at source in the player2011-08-02