Google Inbox

Raised as a usability problem by 43 people on Hacker News over 7 years (2014–2020), in 26 threads.

People raised many different problems with Google Inbox, 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 44 complaints

The site takes ages to load and feels painfully slow2020-07-11
Inbox app became very slow and laggy to interact with2018-10-16
Swipe direction for deleting items is reversed from other iOS apps, causing confusion2018-09-16
Pinned emails don't map to Gmail stars, so years of pins become useless after migrating2018-09-16
Unread flag won't clear until items are seen repeatedly, and the UI feels sluggish2018-09-15
Interface not great and product not intuitive to use2018-09-13
Inbox became too slow to use, so the commenter stopped using it2018-09-13
Gmail's interface is much less usable than Inbox's workflow features2018-09-12
Alerted messages can't be found in Inbox without tedious searching2018-09-12
Pinning messages felt clumsy, so the user switched back to Gmail2018-09-12
Cluttered, irregular list makes it hard to scan and forces extra scrolling2018-04-29
Couldn't figure out how to mark a message unread from the list2018-02-14
Sometimes unable to attach files and the interface is terrible2018-01-23
Search doesn't return Hangouts conversations, so the user must use Gmail instead2017-10-17
Can't mark messages as unread, and search operators are hard to discover or remember2017-10-17
Takes forever to load on the computer2017-07-08
Inbox misclassified emails, so the user missed messages2017-03-24
Stars didn't carry over as pins, and filters were hard to set up2017-03-23
Very slow and uses more resources the longer the tab stays open2017-01-17
No indication when page is ready, so interactions lock it up2016-11-13
Inbox has become very slow and laggy to interact with on desktop2016-11-12
Can't search Hangouts history in Inbox; must switch to Gmail2016-09-21
Can't figure out how to find archived messages2016-09-21
Trip details are buried in email, requiring scrolling to find them2016-09-19
Hard to find the boarding pass QR code in bundled messages2016-09-19
Swipe-back navigation missing and text selection or third-party keyboards work badly on iOS2016-05-27
Advanced settings and filters are missing, forcing users back to Gmail2016-02-18
Couldn't find the mute feature; it was hidden behind a long-press on the done button2016-01-27
Swiping between emails replaced by vertical swipe that returns to inbox, requiring extra taps2015-12-05
Deleting an email takes two or three actions, too slow with high mail volume2015-10-09
Looks so busy and cluttered for a simple list of messages2015-06-10
Must activate invite through mobile app before using the web version2015-02-05
Loading bubble keeps spinning and emails can't be opened in Firefox2015-02-05
Animations run at a couple frames per second, making the web app nearly unusable in Firefox2015-02-04
Keyboard shortcuts are more restrictive than Gmail's, forcing mouse use for some operations2014-11-10
Search is plain text only, so can't find packages in transit or specific article types2014-10-29
Invite button stays locked for 24 hours after signing up2014-10-27
Invite option hidden from create menu, so users can't find how to invite people2014-10-24
Animations start slowly and scrolling jumps back a section when trackpad fingers backtrack2014-10-23
App downloads but then says invite-only, and invite link opens Gmail compose instead of a mail app2014-10-23
Scrolling is inconsistent, sometimes moving the screen and sometimes triggering an animation, causing users to skip content2014-10-23
Can't find the invite option2014-10-22
Hangouts-style chat is forced on with no way to turn it off2014-10-22
Composing is inline and options are hidden behind menus, requiring digging and memorizing icons2014-10-22