Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Permission prompts
Raised as a usability problem by 16 people on Hacker News over 8 years (2019–2026), in 16 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Users blindly click yes to frequent permission promptsUnreviewed
20192026- Users blindly click yes to frequent permission prompts just to make things work2025-08-07
- Site-styled permission prompts could look inconsistent and confuse users, like cookie banners2025-06-15
- Modal permission prompts get clicked through without users understanding what access they grant2025-03-15
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
- Repeated annoying popups wear people down until they click accept on everything2026-08-06
- Once a permission is denied, users must manually dig through site settings to change their mind2026-07-02
- Users blindly click yes to frequent permission prompts just to make things work2025-08-07
- Site-styled permission prompts could look inconsistent and confuse users, like cookie banners2025-06-15
- Users cannot tell why an app requests broad file permissions, so they click through blindly2025-05-18
- Modal permission prompts get clicked through without users understanding what access they grant2025-03-15
- Too many annoying permission screens and popups for every non-trivial interaction2024-06-06
- Multiple permissions at once produce a wall of text users won't read or understand2023-03-15
- Only deferral option beside Always allow pushes users into permanent choices2023-03-06
- Users give up and click Allow on repeatedly popping permission modals2021-11-10
- Users habitually click through permission prompts without reading them, training them to accept2021-07-14
- Decline option bypasses the browser, so declining is not the normal choice2021-05-02
- Users who accidentally deny a permission forever cannot easily re-enable it2021-04-20
- User cannot tell what each permission click means or what it implies2021-02-24
- Popup permission boxes are annoying, so users click Yes or No reflexively2020-06-30
- Accidental clicks land on a popup right as it appears, triggering unintended choices2019-04-03