Products · Product
Google Docs
Raised as a usability problem by 294 people on Hacker News over 19 years (2008–2026), in 277 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
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Every issue, all time, most people first
Hundred-page Word documents still lag badly on loadUnreviewed
20082026- Google Docs PDF viewer is horribly slow and unpleasant on phones2024-04-20
- Web apps feel slow and laggy, with long waits to open and copy-paste problems2023-03-15
- Large documents take many seconds to load, slower than desktop alternatives2022-09-02
Folders hard to find and use, so documents can't be organisedUnreviewed
20082026- Hard to organize documents into mental spaces in Google Drive2025-03-16
- Can't find documents again, and no save button breaks their workflow2023-06-03
- Folders are hard to find and use, so documents can't be organized2021-09-22
Complex documents mangle DOCX and PDF formattingUnreviewed
20082026- Struggles with anything beyond basic layout or formatting needs2025-04-15
- Google Docs output looks uglier and can break imported Word templates2024-04-05
- Word documents with heavy formatting come out garbled or mangled2023-08-23
Copy and paste only works in Chrome browserUnreviewed
20082026- Copy and paste fails in Google Docs under Firefox2025-11-23
- Copy and paste options in right-click menu don't work outside Chrome2024-11-19
- Paste as markdown and paste without formatting only work in Chrome2024-11-18
Page breaks get in the way when reading and editing on screenUnreviewed
20082026- Editing early content causes cascading layout chaos; page breaks are hard to see and use2022-03-05
- Tables, spacing, footnotes and images break or look confusing across page breaks2022-03-04
- Page breaks get in the way when reading and editing the document on screen2022-03-04
Lag on almost every operation makes spreadsheets slowUnreviewed
20082026- Spreadsheets lag, accepting input but delaying formula calculation, and documents load only partly2025-05-01
- Complex spreadsheets feel sluggish and slow to respond, wasting the user's time2020-05-18
- Performance becomes laggy and slow when building reasonably sized documents or spreadsheets in browser2017-07-01
In Firefox, printing forces a PDF download first, confusing usersUnreviewed
20082026- Printing only offered via PDF download, requiring extra steps in Firefox2020-01-31
- In Firefox, printing from Google Docs forces a PDF download first, confusing users2018-12-04
- Printing was a mess and left/right clicks interfered with browser functions2017-05-12
Lacks code blocks, making engineering documents hard to keep thereUnreviewed
20082026- Google Docs lacks code blocks, making it tough to keep engineering documents there2023-01-31
- Lacks native code blocks, so users need a third-party add-on for software docs2020-03-24
- Coding in Google Docs is a pain; hard to find the code editor2012-05-16
Comments hard to find near text; resolved comments lose their anchorUnreviewed
20082026- Resolved threads vanish and intermediate comments are hidden, forcing users to dig for context2026-09-16
- Comments are hard to find and navigate, so the commenter forgets to read them2023-09-20
- Can't find relevant comments near text; resolved comments lose connection to the text2022-08-28
Unusable on cellular connection, so edits are impossibleUnreviewed
20082026- Editing a 200-page document is so hard the user had to give up2024-04-05
- Google Docs was unusable on a cellular connection, so the user couldn't edit2015-04-30
- Editing documents on an iPhone is practically unusable2011-06-08
Popup ads interrupt users from their taskUnreviewed
20082026- Unwanted popup ads interrupt users from doing what they came to do2026-08-14
- Gets bombarded with popups and alerts about features it doesn't want2026-01-30
- Pop-up interrupts thinking and must be dismissed repeatedly2025-10-26
Editing clunky and real-time collaboration lags noticeablyUnreviewed
20082026- Editing is slow with high latency and jitter, even on a fast machine2022-12-05
- Editing is clunky and real-time collaboration lags noticeably2022-03-02
- People constantly moving cursors and text around makes real-time co-editing a bad experience2021-05-12
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 50 complaints
- AI writing suggestions pop up mid-thought and disrupt focus while typing2026-10-07
- A markdown setting is hidden and defaults to off, so it's hard to find2026-09-21
- Resolved threads vanish and intermediate comments are hidden, forcing users to dig for context2026-09-16
- Can't easily get the slides' content without clicking through a multi-step download menu2026-08-30
- Typed text in title box gets overwritten after opening doc, so input is unreliable2026-08-30
- Unwanted popup ads interrupt users from doing what they came to do2026-08-14
- Scrolling lags and breaks inertia, and the product is worse for it2026-08-09
- Has to hunt through context menu to find the link option2026-08-05
- Keyboard input behaves incorrectly, with terrible latency and jitter when typing2026-06-10
- Can't connect Docs to Gemini without an @gmail.com address, and the prompt is confusing2026-06-02
- Persistent AI prompt box at the bottom of the screen is distracting and annoying while working2026-05-13
- BatchUpdate uses indexes that are painful to track as the document changes2026-04-28
- Web version is painful to use, so the commenter switches to the app2026-04-06
- Heavy input latency makes typing frustrating; formatting features feel janky2026-03-24
- Markdown converts badly, leaves stray newlines, and editing turns into fighting the WYSIWYG list behavior2026-03-06
- Getting markdown docs to look right needs multiple annoying clicks and steps2026-03-05
- Text color icon is hard to find every time they need it2026-02-02
- Gets bombarded with popups and alerts about features it doesn't want2026-01-30
- Version history is fragile; changes collapse and copies lose history2025-12-18
- Many options are hard to find in phone view2025-11-26
- Copy and paste fails in Google Docs under Firefox2025-11-23
- Gemini buttons inconsistently answer about the document or about anything else2025-11-19
- Equation editing in Google Docs is among the worst of word processors2025-11-03
- Pop-up interrupts thinking and must be dismissed repeatedly2025-10-26
- Inserting text at the cursor needs a deep object hierarchy, factory functions, and reparenting2025-08-20
- Canvas-based input causes trouble with emoji and non-English text entry2025-08-06
- Editing a document is limited to clicking through the web UI, so Vim-style bulk edits are impossible2025-07-17
- Google's version control interface is described as really awful2025-07-16
- Vim muscle memory makes editing in browser textareas and Google Docs frustrating2025-07-15
- Patients and physicians found Google Forms looked unprofessional, so the client dropped it2025-07-10
- Word processing is astonishingly bad to use2025-05-11
- Templates' design and layout are hard to use in practice2025-05-09
- Spreadsheets lag, accepting input but delaying formula calculation, and documents load only partly2025-05-01
- Search inside the document is very poor and hard to get results from2025-05-01
- Struggles with anything beyond basic layout or formatting needs2025-04-15
- Clicking the custom Copy/Paste menu buttons shows a popup telling users to use keyboard shortcuts instead2025-04-04
- Waiting for the form to load every time they want to log an event2025-03-16
- Hard to organize documents into mental spaces in Google Drive2025-03-16
- Mangles PowerPoint formatting after the file is opened and auto-saved in the browser2025-01-26
- Make a copy option is unavailable unless the /htmlview suffix is removed from the URL2025-01-14
- Feels cluttered and slower than the older, snappier, more obvious versions2025-01-10
- Searching documents in Google Docs is dreadful compared to a directory tree2025-01-09
- No programmatic way to insert Markdown, unlike the UI's paste-from-Markdown2024-12-10
- Sections of the page disappear when scrolling moderately fast and must wait to re-render2024-11-30
- Copy and paste options in right-click menu don't work outside Chrome2024-11-19
- Paste as markdown and paste without formatting only work in Chrome2024-11-18
- Users ask for years how to get numbered headings working2024-11-02
- Hard to add basic elements like text boxes or arrows to documents2024-09-23
- Pasting from Google Docs carries unwanted fonts and font sizes into the blog editor2024-07-17
- Scrolling is terrible on iPad, and tap-top-edge scroll-to-top shortcut doesn't work2024-07-09