Products · Product
HBO Max
Raised as a usability problem by 74 people on Hacker News over 14 years (2012–2025), in 52 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Episodes sort newest-first, so the first episode needs scrolling a full seasonUnreviewed
20122026- After finishing an episode, the next-episode button sometimes plays an earlier episode instead.2025-12-03
- No way to change seasons from the episode list while watching2022-01-17
- Episodes sort newest-first, so reaching a show's first episode means scrolling a full season2015-04-27
App is very slow and crashes on Samsung TVs during long videosUnreviewed
20122026- App is very slow and crashes on Samsung TVs during long videos2021-09-07
- App is slow and laggy with horrible play delay on smart TVs2021-08-24
- App gets stuck on a Samsung TV, forcing the user to force quit2020-09-28
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
- Can't find the show anywhere on the streaming service2025-12-03
- After finishing an episode, the next-episode button sometimes plays an earlier episode instead.2025-12-03
- Rewind and fast forward take up to 10 seconds to respond and often land in the wrong place2025-12-03
- No click-to-skip-10-seconds; seeking is imprecise, off by about a minute2025-02-06
- Can't tell whether HBO or the app is which, confusing naming2024-06-11
- Captcha looks like an advert, so non-technical users ignore it and get stuck2023-05-30
- Old app only shows a page redirecting users to a new app store download2023-05-30
- Must click each image tile individually, which is slow without drag-select2023-05-30
- Remote swipe skips 80% of carousel items; carousel expands on pause and hides content2023-05-30
- Captcha puzzle involving moving a train is super confusing for non-technical users2023-05-30
- Software described as consistently infuriating to use2023-05-30
- Shows a 'Who Is Watching?' screen with only one profile every visit, forcing an extra click2023-05-09
- No visual feedback after pressing play, leaving user unsure if it registered2023-03-24
- App crashes repeatedly across many devices, roughly a hundred times in a year2022-11-09
- Service and site are so bad they discourage watching anything2022-10-25
- Rewind breaks the web player, forcing refresh and losing the playback position2022-09-14
- Site pretends user is logged out, then makes them re-pick profile and find the show again2022-08-21
- App crashes when downloading a video for offline viewing at 99%2022-08-19
- Audio starts out of sync, must rewind once or twice to fix2022-07-17
- Constant spinners after login and being thrown out to other apps2022-06-27
- Its UX needs a lot of work, making it worse than Netflix2022-04-30
- Rewind crashes the app about 20% of the time2022-04-22
- Streaming quality jumps constantly between 720p and 4K while watching2022-02-09
- Replays the last watched episode, forcing manual scrubbing to reach the next one2022-02-09
- No way to open a show's page from the recently viewed carousel2022-01-17
- Repeatedly logged out and forced through a convoluted login via cable provider2022-01-17
- Commenter finds HBO Max's interface and experience worse than HBO Now's2022-01-17
- No way to change seasons from the episode list while watching2022-01-17
- Un-pausing a show on Roku works only half the time2022-01-03
- Scrubbing behaves unintuitively, and random sign-outs force a confusing re-login and re-finding of episodes2022-01-03
- Old account stuck in verification, can't get a new verification email, payment update fails2021-12-29
- HBO streaming apps are unreliable and hard to use2021-09-07
- App is very slow and crashes on Samsung TVs during long videos2021-09-07
- Scrolling is so bad it pushes viewers toward other services2021-09-07
- App is so bad the commenter would rather pirate content than use it2021-08-25
- Forced profile prompt interrupts after pressing play on specific content2021-08-24
- Playback randomly stops, forcing a page refresh mid-episode2021-08-24
- Shows "who is watching" prompt every time before content plays, even with a single profile2021-08-24
- App is slow and laggy with horrible play delay on smart TVs2021-08-24
- App is sluggish and slow to respond on a high-end Roku2021-08-24
- So slow and buggy that some days can't watch what they want2021-08-24
- Show details screen takes about a minute to load and crashes if buttons are pressed2021-03-02
- App hangs and errors out, forcing constant restarts2021-02-04
- Buffers only a few seconds, so playback stalls on spotty internet2021-02-04
- UI is sluggish and painful to use on Roku2021-02-04
- Skipping forward 15/30 seconds takes almost as long as watching them2021-02-04
- Has to relearn how to find the section they want every time2021-02-04
- Commenter says the streaming service has bad UX, without specifying the problem2021-02-04
- Refuses to run on older devices, browsers, and Linux, forcing cancellation2020-10-22
- HBO Go's interface is cluttered and hard to use compared to Netflix2020-09-28