Pidgin

Raised as a usability problem by 19 people on Hacker News over 16 years (2009–2024), in 19 threads.

People raised many different problems with Pidgin, 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 20 complaints

Ctrl+C was bound to another action, so copy-paste didn't work2024-11-22
OMEMO plugin is too wonky to get working in Pidgin2024-11-07
Multiple webapps crammed into one window feels ugly and awkward to use2024-05-25
Must remember which friend uses which platform, with duplicate entries for the same person2023-12-06
Discord channels show spotty messages and the UI is useless2023-10-24
Login fails: approving 'Is This You?' notifications doesn't let the user sign in2022-03-26
Features don't work and the configuration needed to enable them is hard to find2021-08-23
Plugin docs don't explain how to create chats, buddies, or the Buddy List, making plugin development hard2021-01-22
Very difficult to customize, so the interface stays ugly2019-02-12
Unusable without plugins; most users don't know they need them2019-01-04
Default setup can't connect to mainstream messengers like Facebook, WhatsApp, Skype2017-12-15
Default setup can't connect to mainstream messengers and emoji UI feels dated2017-12-15
Pidgin is awkward and ugly to use for managers on Windows2017-07-16
OTR requires re-handshaking on every laptop restart, which is jarring2016-11-01
Group chat is hard to use; participating across home and work computers fails2016-02-02
Messages not visible when offline and history doesn't transfer across devices2015-08-10
Some GTK apps override Emacs shortcuts, e.g. Ctrl-W closes window2015-02-19
Chat log formats differ between Pidgin and Adium, making cross-platform switching painful2014-01-14
Name-in-use error with no clear way to reclaim the registered nickname2011-08-04
Described as horrible on all platforms, without saying what goes wrong2009-05-02