Products · Product
KiCad
Raised as a usability problem by 75 people on Hacker News over 13 years (2014–2026), in 60 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
Zooming out and back in to pan is annoying without a good wheelUnreviewed
20142026- Scrolling to zoom jumps the cursor to the window center, so pan and zoom happen together unexpectedly2025-08-08
- Zooming out and back in to pan is annoying on trackpads or mice without a good wheel2022-05-03
- Two-finger gesture zooms instead of scrolling, feeling out of place on Mac2018-03-07
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
- Moving a part leaves wires at random angles, forcing manual fixing one by one2026-03-20
- Tutorials show different versions, so newcomer can't find the UI widgets described2026-02-20
- Its user experience is described as abysmal, hard to use2026-02-20
- Overall user experience described as pretty awful, with no specific task named2026-01-30
- User could never figure out how to do basic board design tasks2025-12-09
- Earlier versions were a pain to use, though now improved2025-11-19
- No built-in parts library; users must manually attach parameters to schematic symbols, with inconsistent results2025-11-08
- Refuses to open a file created by a newer version, requiring an upgrade2025-10-29
- Scrolling to zoom jumps the cursor to the window center, so pan and zoom happen together unexpectedly2025-08-08
- Dialog boxes get focus problems under kwin_wayland, fixed by switching to X112025-06-19
- KiCad is too hard to use for routing DDR memory traces2024-11-06
- Manual wire placement is frustrating to do, and the tool gives more trouble than Altium2024-05-22
- Horrid UX makes the open-source design app hard to use2024-02-16
- Board design feels manual, arcane, and hard for beginners to verify as correct2024-02-05
- Changing the schematic requires jumping through hoops to update the layout netlist2024-01-28
- Steep learning curve forces constant searching for resources for specific tasks2023-12-30
- Commenter finds KiCad's interface has awful UX, not usable2023-11-11
- Simple curved shapes are impossible; adjusting them requires redrawing whole tracks; selection boxes grab wrong tracks2023-11-03
- Each step requires learning new keyboard shortcuts and GUIs, feeling intimidatingly complex2023-10-07
- Library system frustrated the commenter until they tried other tools2023-09-29
- Plugin requires fiddling with many settings, making manual routing quicker2023-06-16
- KiCad's autorouter is not good enough compared to Altium's, so the user returns to Altium2023-06-14
- Library and BOM management feels clunky to work with2023-06-14
- Requires manual 'finish and move to the next tool' steps between stages2023-05-20
- Very hard to use; things that should be trivial require hours of tutorials2023-05-12
- Hard to find the correct part symbol and footprint due to library organization2023-03-25
- Takes weeks to complete a PCB, which the commenter blames on poor program design2023-03-09
- Parts arrive in a random pile when the PCB editor opens, forcing manual untangling2023-02-13
- Managing part libraries is confusing, with mixed file formats and hidden standard library paths2023-02-13
- Powerful but very unintuitive for the average user2023-02-13
- Non-intuitive to learn; workflow feels forced on the user2023-02-13
- Took a long time without progress; EDA software UI is hard to learn and takes reading2022-10-15
- Creating a new symbol for every net is awkward and tedious2022-08-09
- Zooming out and back in to pan is annoying on trackpads or mice without a good wheel2022-05-03
- Commenter finds the software quite unusable and says developers resist UX improvements2022-04-23
- Features are hard to reach; obvious actions aren't where users expect, forcing long searches2022-03-10
- Users find the interface unintuitive and the developers dismissed usability feedback2021-12-25
- Hierarchical schematics produce strange inconsistencies, so user gave up using them2021-10-27
- KiCad 5 feels very non-ergonomic to use2021-10-27
- Moving components breaks connected wires; the drag shortcut's wire routing is poor2021-10-27
- Auto-router was removed, forcing an external package and extra docs reading2021-10-05
- Design rules UI is too simplistic and needs expert knowledge, bad for beginners2021-10-05
- Every save reorders objects, creating massive spurious diffs in version control2021-06-03
- Library management has quirks that make it awkward to use2021-02-26
- KiCad's interface feels clunky and cluttered compared to EasyEDA2021-02-18
- Must look away from screen to hit function keys; TouchBar presses unreliable and unconfirmed2020-09-10
- Parts management is atrocious to use2020-07-24
- Fundamentally user hostile, and developers dismiss usability improvements as dumbing down2020-07-23
- Separate schematic and PCB tools make integrated modern workflows cumbersome2020-05-04
- Managing and downloading individual parts is clunky and requires manual library handling2020-05-04