Products · Product
iMessage
Raised as a usability problem by 206 people on Hacker News over 16 years (2011–2026), in 151 threads.
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Every issue, all time, most people first
Group chats degrade for everyone when one member has AndroidUnreviewed
20112026- Messages from non-Apple phones are harder to read in group chats2026-05-19
- Friends' group messages silently fail to reach Android users because they're sent as iMessage2025-11-21
- Android users get dropped from group chats because SMS inclusion breaks constantly2025-11-21
iPhone sends texts as iMessage, so Android users never receive themUnreviewed
20112026- IPhone users accidentally send SMS instead of iMessage and get annoyed2025-02-05
- Videos silently fail to send to non-iMessage users with no alert to sender2024-08-15
- Texts from iPhone users get routed to iMessage, requiring manual deregistration on a website2024-06-12
Messages fail after phone switch, with no sign iMessage is activeUnreviewed
20112026- IMessage stays waiting for activation after changing countries, forcing workarounds2025-11-19
- IMessage deregisters after SIM change and re-registering rarely works2025-06-17
- IMessage and SMS switch protocols opaquely and users cannot choose between them easily2025-02-05
Scrolling back loads older messages slowly, with a hard-to-use interfaceUnreviewed
20112026- Scrolling back fetches messages slowly, with a terrible UI for reaching older messages2023-08-01
- Searching back through a long chat takes hours and misses some words2022-12-02
- Scrolling back through old messages is very slow and the app crashes2022-04-20
Messages go missing or to wrong device, senders can't tell whereUnreviewed
20112026- Messages to a phone number unexpectedly go to a Mac, and users can't easily tell or turn it off2023-12-29
- Messages go missing or to the wrong device, and senders can't tell where messages went2023-02-28
- Messages randomly get re-enabled on MacBook, so texts go there instead of phone2022-10-12
Hard to tell which number or email a conversation usesUnreviewed
20112026- Hard to tell which phone number or email a conversation uses, causing duplicate threads2023-12-27
- No indicator of which number or email you're messaging, and no way to separate or combine them2023-12-23
- Hard to tell which device a message goes to when a contact has several numbers2023-12-15
Messages arrive with random delays in group chatsUnreviewed
20112026- Doesn't handle group messages well and sometimes fails to connect2023-12-05
- Messages lost or delayed, groups broken, senders shown as random numbers2021-04-28
- Messages arrive out of order, old messages reappear, and group chats must be recreated2019-09-05
Can't tell whether an SMS green bubble message was deliveredUnreviewed
20112026- Never knows whether a message was delivered, since delivery status is too minimal2025-03-15
- No way to tell whether an SMS green bubble message was delivered2023-11-16
- Messages silently fail to the wrong number with no way to see details2022-03-07
Reactions to Android users arrive as long plain-text messagesUnreviewed
20112026- Constant reaction and joke notifications in group chats are impossible to ignore, and muting also silences urgent messages.2025-03-15
- Get notified about reactions between other people in group chats, which is annoying2024-07-17
- Reactions generate awkward 'liked your thing' messages for SMS participants in mixed chats2023-06-16
Turning off iMessage silently removes you from group chatsUnreviewed
20112026- Users are tricked into using iMessage through a dark pattern2024-04-04
- Green bubbles and cross-app messaging force juggling many apps and ruin group chats2023-04-30
- Turning off iMessage silently removes you from group chats, a dark-pattern-like trap2022-11-07
Messages go to wrong address and the fix is obscureUnreviewed
20112026- Messages go to the wrong address and the fix is obscure and hard to find2025-04-05
- New Messages windows are a huge step backwards, making it basically unusable2022-03-21
- Messages often fail with a red exclamation icon, forcing repeated retries2013-04-09
Users don't know SMS forwarding exists and must dig through settingsUnreviewed
20112026- No simple switch to choose SMS over data when recipient lacks data2023-10-12
- Users didn't realize SMS forwarding existed and had to hunt through preferences to enable it2022-05-29
- Texts don't reach her off WiFi because the SMS fallback setting is off by default and hidden2014-11-10
Old group threads disappear when others reply, leaving user outUnreviewed
20112026- Group threads randomly split so one member gets messages alone and can't reply to the group2025-03-28
- Old group threads disappear when others reply, leaving user out of conversations2023-02-28
- Switching to Android breaks group MMS; iPhone members must delete threads and start new ones2016-01-29
Photos fail to send to non-iMessage contactsUnreviewed
20112026- Users can't tell whether messages go as SMS or iMessage, so images get compressed unexpectedly2025-06-30
- Sending photos to non-iMessage contacts fails, making the phone's messaging experience broken2023-12-11
- No clear way to dismiss conversations without deleting; photos fail to arrive and can't be sent with text2021-03-01
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
- Messages from non-Apple phones are harder to read in group chats2026-05-19
- IMessages arrive on Mac later than phone, so waiting for sync is slower than typing manually2026-04-15
- Users can't tell which messaging mode is active except by bubble color, and encryption silently switches to SMS2026-04-04
- ICloud sync still stores all attachments locally on every device, filling disk space2026-01-26
- First typed word gets deleted and scrolling gets stuck until reopening conversation2025-12-28
- Friends' group messages silently fail to reach Android users because they're sent as iMessage2025-11-21
- Android users get dropped from group chats because SMS inclusion breaks constantly2025-11-21
- IMessage stays waiting for activation after changing countries, forcing workarounds2025-11-19
- Audio message recording silently fails or refuses, often needing several attempts before it works2025-10-23
- Buggy, slow, and hard to get things done; threaded messages are a nightmare2025-10-16
- Texting Apple devices from Android is extremely annoying, with SMS fallback2025-08-19
- Search lacks filters like sender, attachment type, or date, and can't search within one chat2025-08-06
- Tapping an address in iMessage always opens Apple Maps, with no way to pick Google Maps2025-07-14
- Apple deliberately degrades messaging for non-iPhone users, making group chats with Android users worse2025-07-01
- Users can't tell whether messages go as SMS or iMessage, so images get compressed unexpectedly2025-06-30
- People lose conversations with loved ones because they can't export and save chats2025-06-30
- IMessage deregisters after SIM change and re-registering rarely works2025-06-17
- Sharing photos with different family groups on different schedules is clunky2025-05-21
- Messages go to the wrong address and the fix is obscure and hard to find2025-04-05
- Reactions are clumsy, search is nearly useless, and adding photos or location is complicated2025-03-28
- Group threads randomly split so one member gets messages alone and can't reply to the group2025-03-28
- Can't send RCS messages from a laptop through iMessage2025-03-18
- Constant reaction and joke notifications in group chats are impossible to ignore, and muting also silences urgent messages.2025-03-15
- Never knows whether a message was delivered, since delivery status is too minimal2025-03-15
- Group chat can only be created after sending a first text, which is non-obvious and hard to find.2025-03-15
- Voice messages from iPad and Mac often arrive as unplayable .caf files2025-03-04
- Typing lags badly, with 250ms delay per keystroke, in longer messages2025-03-04
- IPhone users accidentally send SMS instead of iMessage and get annoyed2025-02-05
- IMessage and SMS switch protocols opaquely and users cannot choose between them easily2025-02-05
- Uses dark patterns that separate iPhone users from Android contacts over time2025-02-05
- Group chats are awful to use when a member has an Android phone2024-10-10
- Forced ~1 second animation every time the photo menu opens, slowing adding photos2024-08-31
- Videos silently fail to send to non-iMessage users with no alert to sender2024-08-15
- Get notified about reactions between other people in group chats, which is annoying2024-07-17
- Tapbacks arrive as text without indicating which message they attach to2024-06-17
- Texts from iPhone users get routed to iMessage, requiring manual deregistration on a website2024-06-12
- Full-resolution images arrive by default and metadata-stripped photos are annoying to save2024-06-12
- Can't text from the computer, so must pick up the phone and look at it2024-04-08
- Users are tricked into using iMessage through a dark pattern2024-04-04
- IPhone keeps sending texts as iMessage, so Android user never receives them2024-03-22
- Texts sent to switched-to-Android users still get routed to iMessage instead of SMS2024-03-21
- Group chats and shared albums don't work well with non-Apple users2024-03-21
- No easy way for a child to message parent from an iPad without a SIM2024-01-27
- Useful actions hidden behind slow animations and extra clicks; awkward photo selection and pinned chats2024-01-15
- Messages silently fail to arrive because iOS prefers iMessage over SMS for contacts with both2024-01-05
- Search fails to find messages that exist, forcing manual scrolling2024-01-05
- Messages to Android friends in group chats fall back to SMS and get garbled2024-01-05
- Messages to a phone number unexpectedly go to a Mac, and users can't easily tell or turn it off2023-12-29
- First message to a contact defaults to an iMessage email address instead of the phone number2023-12-27
- Hard to tell which phone number or email a conversation uses, causing duplicate threads2023-12-27