Products · Broad category
Recipe websites
Raised as a usability problem by 124 people on Hacker News over 18 years (2009–2026), in 94 threads.
This is a broad category rather than one product, so its issues aren't ranked on the home page.
- 1
- 2
Every issue, all time, most people first
Ingredients and instructions buried under stories, ads, scrollingUnreviewed
20092026- Recipe pages are cluttered and hard to get through to the actual recipe2026-10-09
- Recipe searches return ad-riddled pages with cookie prompts, forced sign-ups, and life stories before the recipe2026-09-14
- Recipe is buried under ads and fake stories on recipe sites2026-08-27
Ads reload and jump the page mid-sentence while readingUnreviewed
20092026- Ads reload and jump the page mid-sentence, cluttering recipe reading2026-04-13
- Modals, auto-playing videos and shifting ads block the recipe and jump link2024-03-07
- Ads clutter pages, making it hard to find the needed information, especially on mobile2024-01-09
Too many recipe methods to sift through to find good onesUnreviewed
20092026- Too many recipes make people unable to decide what to cook at dinnertime2026-02-17
- Other recipe sites make it too hard to find the recipe you want2022-01-04
- Too many recipe methods to sift through; hard to find the good ones2021-06-28
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 50 complaints
- Recipe pages are cluttered and hard to get through to the actual recipe2026-10-09
- Recipe searches return ad-riddled pages with cookie prompts, forced sign-ups, and life stories before the recipe2026-09-14
- Recipe is buried under ads and fake stories on recipe sites2026-08-27
- Recipes buried under blogspam, filler paragraphs and ads2026-08-16
- Ads reload and jump the page mid-sentence, cluttering recipe reading2026-04-13
- Recipe is buried under ads, popups, videos and life story2026-03-15
- Too many recipes make people unable to decide what to cook at dinnertime2026-02-17
- Recipe sites are very painful to use on mobile and slightly less painful on laptops2026-01-13
- Recipe must be scrolled through nine pages to reach ingredients2025-12-31
- Recipe pages bury ingredients and instructions under filler anecdotes, pop-up videos, and vague quantities2025-12-04
- Most recipe sites are a mess to navigate on mobile2025-10-14
- Quantities buried in text block are slow and error-prone to look up2025-08-30
- Ingredient list buried under paragraphs, images and a video; must skip to bottom2025-08-13
- Pop-ups and auto-play videos reappear right after being closed on mobile2025-07-14
- Ingredients are buried under long scrolling before they can be seen2025-04-02
- Recipe sites bury instructions under massive ads and fluff text2025-04-02
- Recipe sites are full of ads, popups and poor UI obscuring ingredients and method2024-10-30
- Recipe pages are cluttered with ads and hard to read2024-09-30
- Page crashes and refreshes on iPad, scrolling back to top and losing place2024-09-12
- Must click through cookie wall before reading recipe content2024-05-08
- Jump to Recipe button is confusing and hard to rely on2024-05-08
- Must scroll four pages to find ingredients and instructions, then scroll back and forth while cooking2024-04-28
- Must scroll past long text, video and ads to reach ingredients and instructions2024-04-28
- Modals, auto-playing videos and shifting ads block the recipe and jump link2024-03-07
- Recipe must be dug out from a long life-story preamble before the actual recipe2024-02-27
- Ads clutter pages, making it hard to find the needed information, especially on mobile2024-01-09
- Popups cover content and close buttons are tiny; pages stay blank while loading; scroll position jumps2023-12-04
- Spent about 10 minutes unable to find the recipe within the article text2023-10-31
- Must wade through long backstory pages before reaching the actual information2023-10-27
- Actual recipe buried under autoplay videos, ads, newsletter and cookie popups2023-10-25
- Have to wade through lots of ads to find a recipe2023-10-15
- Key recipe is buried under unnecessary text and ads2023-07-17
- Answer buried under scrolling, wasting user time finding what they came for2023-07-02
- Recipes are buried at the bottom of pages under filler text2023-06-16
- Must scroll past filler text, popups and shifting ads to reach recipe2023-06-14
- SEO-optimized recipe sites flood results, making useful pages hard to find2023-06-02
- Recipe sites are strewn with ads and newsletter popups2023-05-14
- Recipe searches bury the actual ingredients and steps under pages of bloated filler2023-03-29
- Must click through ads, modals and long intros to reach the recipe2023-03-23
- The jump to recipe button is incredibly unobvious, hard to spot on the page2023-01-01
- Page constantly hijacks the browser to show ads, making it barely usable2022-10-25
- Recipe content hidden behind tabs forcing several extra clicks2022-05-06
- Actual recipe is buried under long stories and ads, requiring excessive scrolling2022-04-13
- Simple recipes are buried under long backstory filler in search results2022-02-15
- Other recipe sites make it too hard to find the recipe you want2022-01-04
- Actual recipe is buried under long story and video before it appears2022-01-04
- Ads and autoplaying videos clutter recipe pages; accidental taps land on random links2022-01-04
- Scrolling through clutter to find the next ingredient while cooking, causing mistakes2022-01-04
- Must scroll past long personal story and video to reach the recipe2022-01-04
- Recipe sites are cluttered and user-hostile, making the actual recipe hard to reach2022-01-04