Messages

Raised as a usability problem by 16 people on Hacker News over 14 years (2012–2025), in 13 threads.

People raised many different problems with Messages, 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 16 complaints

Can't tell that adding a contact by email switches group to texts, emailing Apple users2025-04-05
Keyboard lags while typing and sometimes skips typed letters2025-03-04
Messages sometimes don't arrive on Mac with no way to tell what's missing2025-03-04
Messages freezes for 5-10 seconds whenever a Screen Time request arrives2025-03-04
Can't pinch-zoom text to resize it; must tap through menus to set font size and color2022-03-17
Texts sometimes go to a contact's email address instead of their phone number2021-04-29
Slower, can't multi-select threads to delete, lacks keyboard shortcuts, needs five clicks to reply from notification2021-03-30
Messages stops syncing after password change; user must repeatedly disable and re-enable the account2020-10-03
Keeps disconnecting from the phone, so the web messaging is unreliable2020-09-05
Can't jump between found messages on iPhone like on Mac2018-02-13
Messages UI feels cramped and complicated, less intuitive than before2016-12-13
Hidden extra features clutter the app and people can't find their way back to plain messaging2016-12-13
Swipe gesture deletes differently in Messages and Mail, causing inconsistent actions2016-05-28
Search hangs and crashes, and results take many minutes to appear2013-02-24
Messages sent from one computer show as sent but never arrive, with red exclamation badges2012-08-17
Moved conversations reappear in the main window too when buddy replies2012-02-16