Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Radio buttons
Raised as a usability problem by 7 people on Hacker News over 11 years (2016–2026), in 6 threads.
People raised many different problems with Radio buttons, 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 7 complaints
- Radio buttons can't be deselected once one is chosen without scripting2026-01-20
- Clicking label unexpectedly selects widget with no visual cue of clickable area2024-01-28
- Circle and square distinction is unintuitive, so users can't easily tell radio from checkbox2024-01-28
- Gap between radio button and label isn't clickable2021-05-05
- Empty and filled circles confusing for choosing one option versus multiple2020-11-08
- Radio buttons are hard to style and need hacks to look nice2019-06-08
- Users aim at the small circle because label text often isn't clickable, losing time2016-06-07