Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Notifications
Raised as a usability problem by 16 people on Hacker News over 16 years (2011–2026), in 15 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Notifications push people into constant interruptions to drive engagementUnreviewed
20112026- Users spend hours unsubscribing and toggling settings, yet notifications keep coming back2026-01-30
- Too many app notifications and adverts bury the important ones2025-09-25
- Too many repeated notifications across devices get ignored as overload2024-02-21
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 15 complaints
- No way to view previously dismissed notifications, so easy to lose them2026-07-03
- Users spend hours unsubscribing and toggling settings, yet notifications keep coming back2026-01-30
- Too many app notifications and adverts bury the important ones2025-09-25
- Developers mislabel ads as regular notifications, so users can't separate spam from real alerts2025-06-29
- Too many repeated notifications across devices get ignored as overload2024-02-21
- Couldn't find notification settings despite going through every setting2022-06-06
- Notifications get abused to drive engagement, pushing users into constant interruptions2021-07-29
- Too many ways to miss notifications; easy to misconfigure notification services2020-09-17
- Dismissing a notification takes about 2.5 seconds, slower than opening it2019-10-25
- Notifications in most apps are a dark pattern that pulls attention2019-02-01
- Fast-moving popups cause false clicks on buttons2018-01-31
- Notifications interrupt users mid-task with non-urgent, unactionable content2018-01-31
- Too many notifications bury the important ones in noise2017-03-12
- People struggle to configure notifications and unsubscribe from unwanted ones2016-07-07
- Notifications at the bottom of the screen could block or shift the keyboard while typing2011-03-08