Products · Product
PeerTube
Raised as a usability problem by 42 people on Hacker News over 9 years (2018–2026), in 26 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
- 1Search fails to surface wanted videosUnreviewed
- 1Search fails to surface wanted videosUnreviewed
Every issue, all time, most people first
Search fails to surface wanted videosUnreviewed
20182026- Users must search for videos instead of being shown videos on the home page2026-07-03
- Users must hunt across federated sites to find videos to watch2026-07-02
- Clicking search results shows a playback failure error for videos2025-03-19
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 41 complaints
- Users must search for videos instead of being shown videos on the home page2026-07-03
- Homepage doesn't show content first, making it hard to start browsing2026-07-03
- Browse content leads to a welcome page with no videos, and links loop back to it2026-07-03
- Installation steps are very onerous, requiring lots of manual work for hobbyists2026-07-03
- Joining a federated instance requires a labyrinth of confusing steps and finding friends is hard2026-07-03
- Users must hunt across federated sites to find videos to watch2026-07-02
- Clicking search results shows a playback failure error for videos2025-03-19
- UX of FramaSoft tools is borderline unusable, PeerTube especially2025-03-18
- Hard to understand how everyday people would use it2025-03-18
- Search fails to surface videos the user wants, so they can't find anything they like2024-12-12
- No visible link to the mobile app on the home page2024-12-11
- Announcement text isn't clickable and the real download link is hard to find2024-12-11
- Confusing site structure; users can't tell what to visit or where videos are2024-12-11
- Confusing page; user couldn't find the thing they were looking for2024-12-11
- Can't find remote videos to watch; search and filtering on self-hosted instances are unreliable2023-11-29
- Discover more button dumps users into a search engine instead of showing examples2023-11-28
- Homepage is useless and search only shows two results before needing extra clicks2023-11-20
- Setting up and federating servers took a ridiculous amount of effort2023-10-22
- Requires multiple unintuitive steps before users can start using it2023-10-17
- Cross-software browsing of federated media is unintuitive, so users need an account on each instance2023-07-02
- No global search and opt-in federation make it hard to find content2023-05-10
- Browser-based JavaScript interface is too slow on the user's old computers2022-07-22
- Mobile fullscreen video controls are blocked by Hardlimit's top and bottom banners2022-04-28
- Search opens a popup to a different site instead of searching in place2022-03-15
- Search tries to open a popup on another domain that Firefox blocks, confusing viewers2022-02-23
- Confusing, hostile design and videos buffer constantly for viewers2022-02-23
- Unclear what to do on the site; users can't tell if download needed or what an instance is2021-11-30
- Confusing 'instance' concept blocks new creators from uploading videos2021-09-19
- Uploads blocked with cryptic message 'uploads are not allowed on this instance'2021-07-09
- Can't find anything to watch and can't tell why search isn't working2021-01-10
- Foreign-language content clutters the front page with no locale filtering2020-10-22
- Alternatives like PeerTube are frustrating to use moment to moment2020-09-24
- Search results keep showing other languages even when English is set as main language2020-08-20
- Homepage is confusing and cluttered with promo videos and links, so user can't find the video directory2020-05-27
- Interface too complex for non-technical users; jargon like instance and federated exposed2020-05-16
- Hard for normal users to find a working video site; no visible content and unclear instance status2020-05-15
- Homepage is mostly politics explainer with little content, hiding the actual videos2020-05-15
- Interface is slow, infinite scroll takes seconds to catch up each time2019-11-13
- Admin UI lacks mass ban or filters, making abuse by many accounts hard to handle2019-11-12
- Installing and maintaining it involves multi-step, convoluted processes with many dependencies2018-07-21
- Search and recommendations favor big channels and repeat already-seen videos that stay for weeks2018-03-30