Ghidra

Raised as a usability problem by 29 people on Hacker News over 11 years (2016–2026), in 23 threads.

People raised many different problems with Ghidra, 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 29 complaints

Extremely slow analysis of Go binaries forced exclusion from the benchmark2026-02-22
Loses all analysis work when it crashes or is interrupted, with no way to recover partial results2026-02-16
Debugger freezes or refuses to update program state properly2025-05-28
Default debugger layout shows meaningless data and forces needed windows into tabs2025-05-28
Hard to make the UI look right on Linux HiDPI displays2024-05-29
Non-native controls lack system services, honored key bindings, and native file dialogs, causing friction on macOS2024-05-18
Multi-window layout is a mess and many things aren't intuitive; resizing columns is hard2024-04-06
Wrong initial types make decompiled output become gibberish or drop code2024-03-29
Hard to install the correct Java version, needing repeated trips to the docs2023-06-20
No automated way to mark pointers; must manually scroll and press P2023-05-12
Ghidra lacks keyboard-driven workflow that IDA offers, hurting experienced reverse engineers2022-10-19
Cannot split a variable so different types apply after reassignment2022-10-19
Must scroll sideways to read lines; screenshots cut off by menu; cannot zoom out2022-08-23
Shiny UI is lacking, though the UX becomes usable after learning it2022-07-11
The *source = *destination renaming notation was very confusing to read.2022-04-24
Clunky, dated user interface that is hard to work with2021-12-14
Buttons and layout are cluttered and hard to parse; icons are opaque2021-12-14
Analysis hangs indefinitely with no diagnostic information about why2021-07-28
Software is heavily bugged, especially the user interface2021-07-28
Must hand-annotate virtual calls and vtables, unlike IDA's automatic C++ handling2021-07-14
Reverse engineering tools are difficult to use and cluttered2020-11-17
Commenter finds Ghidra's user interface and experience awful, so avoids using it2020-08-20
Structure editor's decimal offsets, unsaved-edit handling and reload prompts confuse and lose work2019-10-29
UI is poorly designed, with many small annoying paper cuts2019-10-29
Creating structures requires too much overhead; long undefined runs clutter view2019-10-29
UI looks dated and is somewhat uncomfortable to use2019-03-11
Clicking a variable highlights many temporary assignment uses, making tracing chains tedious2019-03-06
Java UI looks bad on Windows and the tool is slow2019-03-06
Reverse engineering tool's UI is far from intuitive2016-12-10