Midnight Commander

Raised as a usability problem by 16 people on Hacker News over 14 years (2013–2026), in 14 threads.

People raised many different problems with Midnight Commander, 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 18 complaints

Actively prevents users from learning how things work in the terminal2026-07-10
Customizing key bindings is a total headache2026-04-12
Has to remember Alt+S before typing the search pattern, so muscle memory keeps failing2026-03-26
Typing a folder name and pressing Enter runs it as a command, hiding panels and showing an error2025-06-21
Hosted on outdated Trac, making it hard for outsiders to contribute2024-06-20
Without Ctrl-C first, directories fall out of sync between shell and panel, causing confusion2024-01-21
Tab switches panes instead of autocompleting, and the Esc-Tab alternative cannot be discovered2024-01-21
Screen list only shows screens from the current mcedit run when opened from command line2023-10-06
Lacks background operations, so long file tasks block the user2023-09-01
Pressing Ctrl+S every time to start search when entering a directory is cumbersome2022-01-31
Easy tasks need aliases, wrapper scripts and config tweaks to work2022-01-30
No quick way to jump to the other panel's directory or a drive root, forcing manual crawling2021-02-08
Shell sometimes opens in the other tab's directory, leading to accidental deletion2019-12-19
Multi-level pop-up menus in several workflows get in the way and are counter-productive2018-11-26
Left and right arrow keys don't work for navigating directories2018-11-24
Commands are cryptic and no visible way to act without issuing commands, causing anxiety about deleting files2014-04-29
Cryptic abbreviated text commands like RenMov are unclear and can't be explored, causing anxiety about deleting files2014-04-29
Copy, move and rename dialogs assume DOS globbing, so file operations feel weird2013-02-06